Davis Chamber Director Kemble Pope and City’s CIO Talk About the Future – The city of Davis’ economic development community is still reeling from the news that came down two weeks ago, in which Bayer CropScience announced it would be expanding its facility, which required it to move from Davis, where the company AgraQuest was founded, to West Sacramento which had space available to accommodate the company.
On Thursday, business leaders Kemble Pope, the executive Director of the Davis Chamber, along with his counterparts Denice Seals from West Sacramento and Roger Niello from Sac Metro Chamber, put their best face forward in a joint op-ed in the Sacramento Bee.
“The recent news that Bayer CropScience will be expanding its presence in the Sacramento region is further proof that we have the right ingredients to start, grow, retain and attract innovative companies with high-paying jobs,” Mr. Pope and his colleagues writes. “The cities of Davis and West Sacramento have much to crow about regarding the news, as does the region as a whole.”
“This most recent success story began in 1995 with the founding of the small startup company, AgraQuest, in Davis. The city was a nurturing home that provided several opportunities for growth and a high quality of life that attracted talented employees as the company grew to more than 200 workers,” they continue. “In 2012, the company’s global successes prompted Bayer CropScience, a diversified, international agricultural technology company, to acquire it for $425 million. With an impressive number of growing companies and the world’s No. 1 agricultural research university, UC Davis, that call it home, Davis continues to make its mark as an economic engine and fount of innovation and business prosperity.”
“The purpose of co-authoring an op-ed in the Sacramento Bee was to speak to the region about the collaboration that was happening within our region between the cities and communities,” Kemble Pope said on Thursday, “and to educate the region at large that this community of Davis really is driver, a grower of jobs in general.”
This is the key idea that Davis is trying to put forward, that it is the place that can help launch innovation. However, Davis wants to be more than just the home of startups and so, while Davis continues to put its best foot forward regionally, there is a brewing internal conversation about how to move Davis into better position to retain some of their own companies.
On Thursday, the Vanguard sat down with Davis Chamber Executive Director Kemble Pope and the city’s Chief Innovation Officer Rob White to discuss the future of economic development in Davis.
Davis brought in Rob White from Lawrence-Livermore to be the city’s CIO back in March, in part hoping to counter a reputation that Davis is more difficult for businesses than other areas within the region.
Kemble Pope believes that this reputation is undeserved, calling it a “misperception” from “days gone by.” He says, “I don’t believe that Davis is any more difficult to business than most other places in the region. I believe we are a good collaborator with other regional entities.”
Davis, like all of the other communities in the region, has signed onto the Next Economy principles. The op-ed he said, continues to emphasize the case that we have a joint regional economic planning effort that is focused on specific sectors of the economy.
The first key question that is not addressed within that op-ed is to address how big a setback the loss of Bayer is for Davis.
For Rob White, he said, “I think it’s an immediate setback in the sense that we lose the impact of those jobs. We lose the impact of having a large, global, national entity investing in our community.”
He emphasized that this is not just about the loss of jobs. We lose the philanthropy from the large organization, their community involvement and investment.
But the key, he said, is that we now need to find ways not to allow the loss to become more than it currently is, which is a company that could not find a spot in the city of Davis that served its needs. What he wants to avoid is that the loss of Bayer comes to be interpreted as “the city or the region can’t retain investment of corporations like that.”
“Bayer in West Sac is fine,” Mr. White said. “It’s not optimal for Davis, but it’s great for the region. Bayer not investing regionally is problematic.”
The Jim Gray op-ed that was published in the Enterprise in the past week, lays out how the specifics of the Bayer situation and the availability of building space in West Sacramento played a crucial role in the move across the causeway.
But as Kemble Pope noted, “He definitely recognizes that we have limitations in place” and that “we have the opportunity to overcome” these limitations. But he said, “The important part to look at is the end of his piece when he talks about challenges that we do have in front of us – that all communities have in front of them – about what is the best and highest use of our land and our community resources, it’s a balancing game.”
The question before us is whether Davis is simply going to be a university town that can spawn an array of startups based off their research components at the university, or whether it can be a destination for these companies, as well, after they grow and mature.
For Rob White, Davis’ situation is not necessarily unique. Every university town undergoes similar pressures on how to grow while maintaining their character.
“Universities attract investment and that investment is usually research dollars attached to global or national corporations,” Rob White said. Davis is not only a growing system, but the university under the leadership of Chancellor Linda Katehi has a plan to grow by over 5000 students, as well as the necessary faculty and administrators.
“As UC Davis continues to expand there will be pressure on the city of Davis to do something,” he said. “What we have to do is not have a lack of decision making drive our policy. That’s what’s happening now, we have a void of decision making and our policy makers have made it very clear that they want us to move forward with establishing a decision making machine.”
Here the Innovation Park Task Force developed a plan that Mr. White says we need to move forward with and take it to its logical fruition.
At the same time, he reiterated, “I’m not married to what those outcomes are. I’m married that we have an outcome.”
The Chamber is going to have to figure out what the right thing is for their membership, he said, and the city needs to figure out what the right thing is for its citizens.
“The community has to decide what do they want to be part of and what do they want to say it’s okay if it doesn’t happen,” he said. “Because it will happen. There is no doubt that there is a happening going on. But is it going to be in Solano County, is it going to be in Yolo County, is it going to be in West Sac and Woodland, is it going to be in Davis?”
“We have to make the conscious decision of what of that spectrum of growth do we want to accommodate?” he added. For Rob White, Davis needs to figure out if it wants a piece of this action. He cited the city’s current revenue problem, the amenities and infrastructure that Davis has, and that it has limited abilities to pay for it right now.
By way of example, Rob White said that we know right now that the city of Davis does not want a regional mall. That is a revenue source that many communities have gone to, but that Davis has opted not to do.
Kemble Pope noted that Davis has done a good job of identifying what it does not want to do, the regional mall being just one good example, and he said “that’s fine. Davis continues to be the master of its own fate.” But within that framework, Davis does have to decide what it is going to say yes to.
Large corporations are one way to go. In his article on Thursday, Rob White cited the example of Intel in Folsom. “Since 2000, Intel has invested over $4.3 billion in manufacturing capital investment, much of that being done at the Folsom campus,” he wrote.
“In just under 30 years, the Folsom campus has grown well beyond the two office buildings and couple of hundred employees that started the facility,” he said. “Sound familiar? Think that a decade or two of growth for a company like Bayer Crop Science or FMC Schilling Robotics or Marrone Bio Innovations might make a significant difference to Davis?”
On Thursday he said, “Folsom will tell you, if not for Intel, Folsom wouldn’t be what we are today.”
Kemble Pope said, “There is a job-housing imbalance. We need more jobs in this community to create more revenue for the city coffers to continue to pay for the high quality community that we’ve created for ourselves.”
The sustainable approach is to create more opportunities for companies to stay in Davis throughout their life cycles.
“This is an eco-system,” Rob White pointed out. “In the past we have dealt with it in silos. It’s really not a silo, everything has an impact on everything else.”
Davis remains largely a one-company town, the university. A large portion of their funding comes from federal and state sources. Two-thirds of their research money comes from federal sources that are drying up.
One-company towns are problematic because there is a tendency to have a strong boom and bust cycle. “If you be a one-company town you will bust, almost guaranteed.” We have resources to avoid that, but we have to expand upon it.
“That gap is going to continue to get filled in the future by corporations and significant philanthropy from individuals,” Rob White said. The way to succeed he said, and Stanford is a prime example, “is by creating an environment that those folks want to be in.”
Bayer is but one example, Rob White said, where they hope that, even though they have moved across the causeway, they remain committed to investing in the university.
Kemble Pope talked about the “triple-bottom line” of sustainability. “When we say sustainable, it means fiscal, environmental, and social – all three together.” It means creating a place where there are all sorts of different sized companies from small to large, all functioning in Davis.
“We’re at a place where there’s an inflection and that inflection we can either help determine or it will happen,” Rob White said. “If it happens, then you’re in response mode. If we can determine, then we’re actually being proactive.”
From a local standpoint, it seems that most, at least in theory, would support efforts at economic development. The critical question, the point of departure, is what the land use policies have to look like in order to accommodate that kind of growth that everyone seems to desire.
The 800-Pound Gorilla of Residential Development
Is Davis going to have to grow to 100,000 people and how much of that peripheral land is going to have to go for business development opportunities?
Kemble Pope noted Interland, LLC., as an example where you have zoning decisions to build one-story buildings rather than four- or five-story buildings alongside the interstate. And yet, he said, “we can’t just wave a wand” and change those realities. We are constrained now by those past decisions and current fiscal realities.
“There are fiscal realities in place that may or may not allow for different, better, higher purposes that exist,” he said. “I think that conversation is something that needs to continue.”
“It’s all about supply,” he said. “Creating more supply is another big component.”
For Kemble Pope, the Innovation Park Task Force laid out a roadmap that is “palatable to the community.” “I don’t believe anything in that report… assumes or precludes or points to the fact that we’re going to increase the number of households,” he added stating he doesn’t see the relationship between square feet for business as being related to increasing the number of houses we build.
Concern has been expressed that without building housing to accommodate jobs, by bringing in jobs to Davis, we are simply creating a new commuter class who trek from Woodland, Dixon, West Sacramento and further away to work in Davis.
However, both Kemble Pope and Rob White dispute that these are necessarily connected, and they note the number of people who live in Davis but commute to either Sacramento or even the Bay Area, who may be able to find employment closer to home should the opportunities arise.
“There are a fair amount of people who commute out of Davis to go higher hanging jobs because they don’t exist locally,” Rob White stated. “We have a very intelligent and high quality workforce and they don’t have the ability to find many of the opportunities locally.”
“We don’t have enough of the jobs we need locally in order to supply the demand, so we have a lot of people out-commuting,” he said.
The other side of that are the people who are in-commuting, and those are people who are coming because of the university. Most of the service-oriented jobs are filled by students who become essentially local residents, at least during the school year and their tenure at the university.
Rob White said we need to look at data to determine what it is that we need to do to meet our workforce demands and “we need to figure out what are the matches to the resources we have locally.”
Rob White, responding to whether Davis needs to be 100,000 people said, “I don’t know what Davis needs to be. I’m not the policy maker.”
His job and the reason he was brought here was to try to answer the question as to how we ensure that we have high quality jobs locally. The question as to what the community looks like in the future is the job for the city council.
“Someone is going to ask about the question of affordability,” Kemble Pope stated. “This community for 40, 50, 60 years has created the policy,” has “put into place and held the line on sprawl,” has “really done great, smart growth things,” and in so doing it has “created a community that is has an incredibly high quality of living that has sought after by many people, the demand is high, and so it costs a lot to live here.”
“That’s not an artificial figure,” he said. “It’s because we have an amazing community.”
As one poster in yesterday’s article noted, “The reality is we need both business park and housing for workers. To those who say What about Cannery I say what about Covell? The better plan would be to master plan both with houses and business space with good access. Still the reality is that Cannery isn’t big enough for what the community needs.”
The poster adds, “If you build a business park where do they live. If you build houses where do they work. If you continue to squeeze Davis into existing borders you lose the benefits of high tech growth in Davis.”
However, Kemble Pope disagrees. He said, “I think it is a false linkage, a false choice to say that we have to create housing with jobs. I don’t accept that as those being linked.”
While Kemble Pope and Rob White wisely dodged the residential growth issue, it is clear that this will be a large determinate of the discussion, going forward.
You cannot avoid that issue. It is likely what derailed any discussion of swapping conservation easements on the Mace Ranch parcel back in June and it will foreshadow any Measure J votes, whether they be east of Mace Blvd, in Nishi or in the Northwest Quadrant.
Those are the questions that the community will have to determine and, once they do, people like Rob White and Kemble Pope and many others will have to figure out how to fit an economic visions into the existing land.
“We have some opportunity areas, the more that we bring the economy up,” Rob White said, “the more those opportunity sites become valuable.”
What these things look like, where it is, and what the density is, is beyond the decision of people like Rob White. But it does need to get solved, it is a 30-year solution.
PG&E comes up again, as well. “We need to sit down with PG&E and have a conversation, is this the right place for you to be,” Mr. White stated. And then he asked, “Is it the right place for us as a community to do something special?”
Even some of the most progressive councilmembers in the past have cited this as a place that is good for high density. Mr. White argued that whether it is or is it, we need to have that conversation.
He also noted the city held property on Fifth Street and asked if that is the appropriate place for those assets or “is it a use of land that’s inappropriate for the environment it’s in now. It used to be a brilliant place, is it still?”
Rob White cited three spots right of the top of his head as housing opportunity spots that fit within the current restrictions that might preclude peripheral development.
In the end, the community is going to need to decide here how it wants to proceed.
—David M. Greenwald reporting
These guys need to walk a fine line because of the political realities of Davis. I am not so constrained.
but on a public board, shouldn’t you be? i mean, because of you, i’m starting to question whether the real move for economic development isn’t to create a guise for new housing
I want economic growth to provide opportunity. I believe more housing will make living here more affordable. There is no cabal here trying to sneak something through. I am trying to shake the local dogma from a 40 year limits to growth slumber challenging the assumption upon which its edifice rests. My position is that of a gadfly or an outlier. I have no policy authority so you must realize that my arguments are not reflective of our popularly elected leaders.
Yesterday you made a post that I copied below:
“i never really recognized the insidious nature of all of this high tech/ business park development. it’s a backdoor wedge to push for more housing.”
I responded and asked you the questions copied below:
“Its not back door unless you can’t see what’s in front of your face. This is how its done business create jobs, jobs create homes, homes generate taxes and produce children that strengthen our community. Why do you call it insidious? Do you think more people are insidious? “
I think these are important questions that help crystallized the dogma I wish to challenge. Are you going to respond?
As with all articles that are based from interviews, the essence of the conversation can be lost… no matter how good the reporter might be. David does a wonderful job of capturing some of the highlights, but the depth is always hard to portray.
On one point, let me be very clear (in my own words). My specific job is to Jobs. I work with our tech businesses, investors, and research community (including the university) to retain, grow and attract new jobs and investment. This leads to revenue for our community amenities, like parks, trails, bike paths, etc.
Right now, our city budget has a negative cash flow and it gets worse over the coming years. Though most cities suffered during the Recession, many university and high tech industry towns are recovering quickly and have mostly moved back in to the black (or are heading in the right direction). Davis has a trend towards more red ink and it gets worse, not better, in the out years.
So we have a simple choice to make… grow revenue, or cut services. We can introduce more tax measures, which will most certainly address part of the problem. But just like your home accounts, overspending will outstrip obligations very quickly and you will find yourself in fiscal trouble. And we aren’t talking about 1000s of dollars, we are talking about millions.
From my view of the landscape (and based on what I was brought here to do), we have an opportunity to fill part of that revenue gap with revenue streams from support of the tech industry. Cities like Sunnyvale, Mountain View, Palo Alto, Pleasanton, San Ramon, and even Vacaville get significant municipal revenues from these industries. They also have high per capita housing values, wages, and disposable income. Philanthropy is significant… and there are more than just a few companies to tap in to for the funding of community events and amenities.
My job is to give the City Council and City Manager as many opportunities to solve the budget issues as possible. Not all solutions will be workable and some will pass us by. I am not suggesting we should just take whatever comes our way. But we know the university needs the community to be a fervent partner and supporter of its research efforts and we need to help provide for the opportunity for their success, which is inextricably tied to ours. If we can’t, others will… but we also need to be rational that if we choose not to fill a need, we have made this choice consciously and that the choice didn’t just happen to us. As I have said before, lack of a decision is still a decision.
Therefore, in response to the Bayer decision, we need to be proactive and make community decisions… made by the community as a whole, not by individuals. We have a lot of competing needs and views, but I think we can find a common ground. Moving the Innovation Park Taskforce recommendations and Council resolution forward this fall will assist us in the community dialogue. I am not specifically recommending the outcomes, but I am recommending that we look rationally at the data, find comparisons to our situation, put the Davis flavor on it, and then make forward looking decisions. That will allow us to respond instead of react.
Lastly, on housing… my comments to David were to point out that we have several sites under (previous) consideration that we have not moved forward, nor made final decisions. These include (as I hear about constantly) moving the PG&E corp yard to a more suitable location, moving the City’s corp yards, and jointly with the university at Nishi. We have a mixed-use residential plan being considered at the Cannery. But please note, these topics and discussions are not my prevue. The City has staff that are assigned to these areas (Mike Webb is a great resource if you have comments). My job is Jobs… Yes, there are outcomes from the jobs effort, and we have appropriate people assigned to this task working with the Council, City Manager, the Commissions and the community. And I work in concert with them so that pressures created in my area are assessed and discussed. It is truly an eco-system. When something is out of balance, it impacts everything. Davis’ way of life is threatened by revenue shortfalls that compound the problems. We need to get all of our great minds in this town to act selflessly and start to address this issue. We are intelligent, rational beings. Our self-interest (as often discussed on this blog) are threatened by an eco-system quickly going out of balance. We can solve these issues together, working jointly. I am convinced.
“Its not back door unless you can’t see what’s in front of your face. This is how its done business create jobs, jobs create homes, homes generate taxes and produce children that strengthen our community. Why do you call it insidious? Do you think more people are insidious? “
apologies, had to actually do work.
i call anything insidious that is not open and transparent. i don’t consider more people insidious, i consider non-transparent policies insidious. in this case, if people want more housing, then it needs to be about them wanting more housing, not housing forced in under the guise of economic development.
Mr. White said: ” … we have a simple choice to make… grow revenue, or cut services”
I disagree. The third option is to cut back on overly rich employee pay, benefit, and pension packages. Steve Pinkerton has been doing a good job in trying to balance the city books, but a lot more needs to be done.
I agree Mike that cutting public sector pay and benefits is a solution, but then show me any example of where this is actually happening.
I think I will just jump to answer my own question:
— City of Detroit
— City of San Bernardino, Calif.
— Town of Mammoth Lakes, Calf. (Dismissed)
— City of Stockton, Calif.
— Jefferson County, Ala.
— City of Harrisburg, Pa. (Dismissed)
— City of Central Falls, R.I.
— Boise County, Idaho (Dismissed)
Note the similarity?
So, unless we too are interested in pursuing bankruptcy, it seems that we should focus on the revenue side of the budget.
And even if somehow are magically able to make enough cuts to the pay and benefits of existing and future employees and existing retirees (because that is what it would take), increasing and diversifying our revenue base would still be prudent fiscal management, would it not?
“i call anything insidious that is not open and transparent. i don’t consider more people insidious, i consider non-transparent policies insidious. in this case, if people want more housing, then it needs to be about them wanting more housing, not housing forced in under the guise of economic development.”
I think its transparent if the place grows you need places for people to live. We need more housing anyway. i think you are being less than transparent and that you think there is something insidious about building housing but realizing you are getting called out you are trying to obfuscate. Tell me I’m wrong again but there is this dark shadow that hangs over this community. A feeling by many that more people manifested by more houses is insidious. Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe its the housing that some find insidious. Of course without the housing you can’t have the people…
Dang Frankly, you get one right now and again. The youthful vitality does seem on the wain in Davis.”grumpy-ass, easily-irritated, change-averse” would be accurately descriptive of one of the people I talked to a few years ago, when thinking about locating a small consignment shop downtown.
Biddlin ;>)/
[i]Dang Frankly, you get one right now and again. [/i]
Uh oh. Biddlin, now I am having to go back and read what I wrote to see where I misstated something… 😉
What have the benefits of Mori Seiki been? My understanding is that the city gave great concessions tax wise to get them to come?
The very large building is certainly not a beauty? How many jobs and how many live in Davis?
“I think its transparent if the place grows you need places for people to live.”
it’s only transparent if you are operating under teh assumption that a project is only what you say it is.
“We need more housing anyway.”
you’ve made it clear that is your opinion. i don’t agree however.
“i think you are being less than transparent and that you think there is something insidious about building housing but realizing you are getting called out you are trying to obfuscate.”
i have no idea what this sentence is trying to say.
“Tell me I’m wrong again but there is this dark shadow that hangs over this community. A feeling by many that more people manifested by more houses is insidious. Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe its the housing that some find insidious. Of course without the housing you can’t have the people… “
what i find insidious is someone putting forth a measure j/r project stating, hey it’s for a business park its not housing. it gets past. then a year later they come back and say, hey we have all of these jobs, where are we going to house the people?
“The youthful vitality does seem on the wain in Davis.”grumpy-ass, easily-irritated, change-averse” would be accurately descriptive of one of the people I talked to a few years ago”
am i the only one who finds this comment deeply ironic?
Don wrote:
> But as noted before, with a rental vacancy rate
> below 5%, and campus enrollment growing, our immediate
> need is rental housing.
We have a a shortage of rental housing AND an even bigger shortage of housing for sale (the percentage of homes for sale is almost always lower than the percentage of apartments for rent. The “immediate need” depends on who you ask (a single student or a guy with three kids)…
> Housing that would be affordable to young families is
> bought as rental investment property and occupied by
> groups of students.
We know that Davis has some rental homes and condos, but number of investor owned homes and condos is a very small percentage of the overall housing stock. It is larger in the affordable area (investors are not buying in Lake Alhambra to rent to college kids) but last time I look at it we still had way over 90% of even “affordable” (aka the cheapest 25%) of homes and condos selling to owner-occupants.
The shortage of rental apartments is a bummer for someone that needs to live in Davis because they have to pay about ~$300 more a month for rent in Davis vs. Sacramento, but it really hurts when you have to buy in Davis and pay ~$300,000 more for a house to buy in Davis.
SODA wrote:
> What have the benefits of Mori Seiki been?
> My understanding is that the city gave great
> concessions tax wise to get them to come?
I had not heard about any “concessions” the city (or state)gave to Mori Seiki. Are the details available on line?
I would be interested to know since the owner of the building is James J. Didion the brother of author Joan Didion and the former CEO of CB Richard Ellis. Didion is also close personal friends with fellow UC California Haas School of business advisory board member and CB Richard Ellis Chairman Dick Blum (who is also a UC Regent and married to Senator Dianne Feinstein). Over the years Didion and CB Richard Ellis seemed to get more good deals and great contracts than anyone else (but we have to believe out Senior Senator when she tells us she is “shocked” to think she would ever use her political power to make, her husband or any of his friends money). With a combined net worth of about $100 million it is silly to think that Feinstein is anything but a “typical public servant” and her husband is just a “hard working real estate guy” who has made a few good investments (the fact that he got his first big development deal in SF the year he married the SF Mayor and that his construction company got a huge no bid deal in Iraq is just a coincidence and any other firm could have just tried harder to get the business).
I said “We need more housing anyway.”
DP said “You’ve made it clear that is your opinion. i don’t agree however. “
I know that you obviously are adamantly opposed to housing to the extent that you would block needed high tech development if you think its a set up. My question is why do you feel this way?
“I’m not sure about Bidlin though. I think he is a youngster. “
Not quite. [img]http://www.mylespaul.com/forums/members/biddlin-albums-silverflake-picture55340t-2000-lp.jpg[/img]
Nice Les Paul Gold Top Custom Bidlin. You look experienced!
And when comparing Davis’s past growth and economic development, we have a need to admit the dichotomy of strong and weak finances… and how demographic changes relate.
Before 2008, Davis voters believed our finances were strong. We believed that the economy would keep growing and we could afford to sustain our one-company, small-town lifestyle while we also paying top-level wages and benefits to our city employees.
Now we know better. We see that we have grossly over-spent. We see that the economy is limping along at anemic growth levels after dropping a decade or more of previous growth that was determined to be people gorging off of over-heated real-state equity.
We know that our financial situation is very weak, yet we still block even reasonable proposals for growth and economic development.
I think we can blame demographics for this… specifically age demographics.
Davis is becoming more a community of affluent retirees. Our average age is high and growing…. and if we remove the students from the picture, it is growing alarmingly so. Older people tend to be more change-averse. Older people with money, even more so.
But, what all of us old people (count me in) need to recognize is that the qualities that attract us to this town are largely the result of a vibrancy of younger people that helps us hold on to our own youth.
When I think about the greatest places to live on this earth, all of them are vibrant with a large population of young professionals and families.
When I think about those communities with a high percentage of retires and a low percentage of young professionals and families… well quite frankly I think they all suck.
Related to these points, us senior residents of Davis have a responsibility to develop leadership continuity for our fair city. Young professionals are our leaders in-training. Without them we are really setting a stage for the city to die along with us.
We need more robust economic development for a number of reasons, but none more important that the need to keep the old farts from killing the town as a result of their grumpy-ass, easily-irritated, change-averse, selves.
[quote]if the place grows you need places for people to live. We need more housing anyway.[/quote]
I think your argument is getting a little circular on this topic. But as noted before, with a rental vacancy rate below 5%, and campus enrollment growing, our immediate need is rental housing. The press of rental demand overwhelms other aspects of the housing market here. Housing that would be affordable to young families is bought as rental investment property and occupied by groups of students. You would have to build thousands of homes to equalize the Davis market with the surrounding communities. It isn’t going to happen.
Comparisons to Folsom aren’t of much use. First of all, I think most Davisites wouldn’t consider Folsom a reasonable example of urban planning or land-use policies; certainly the way Folsom has grown simply isn’t the Davis style or character. If we had an Intel here, Davis would have merged with Woodland a decade ago and become one big urban area. My judgment is that Davis residents will support development for small and mid-size businesses and reap the benefits of employment that those bring. But that they would not be likely to support a large project to bring in an international corporation. I think the Intel model wouldn’t be what residents here would support.
Intel has done a lot for Folsom, and big corporations do provide philanthropy over a large region. But Davis, thanks to the campus, has a large base of philanthropy. We wouldn’t have the Mondavi Center without UCD. There is strong support for the arts and schools here. There is much to be said for local philanthropy being more effective and more targeted than the kind of thing the big corporations do. When Barbara Jackson donated millions of dollars to augment the Mondavi Center, it was money from UC — her husband was a lifelong Davis resident and UC professor — recycled directly to the community. The schools here get support from private foundations as well as public support of tax measures.
The Innovation Task Force proposed a four-step process of economic development.
[quote]•1) Maximize Existing Inventory to increase development certainty, and flexibility.
•2) Review existing land use, zoning and tax structure with objectives of supporting retention and growth of innovation businesses and maximizing revenue opportunities.
•3) Near Term – The Gateway (Downtown Research & University Innovation District) option offers the best close/in location due to the proximity to University and property owner and University interest, and should be pursued as the City’s top innovation center priority.
•4) Mid-Term – The East and West “edge” sites offer viable options for location and size of larger innovation centers meeting needs of growing mid-sized companies, and should be continued to be explored as part of a mid-term Dispersed Innovation Strategy.[/quote]
It seems some people want to jump right on to the fourth step. Do the first three parts, do them right, and you might get consensus about land annexation and development over a longer period of time. Leap to the big plan from the start, and I would be willing to bet the voters will shoot it down. There are areas of consensus, there are sites to build. There is a process you need to go through to add land, and the goals of housing and business development are somewhat in conflict right now. What I find frustrating is that all of these discussions move to the Intel scale, when we could be taking action now to try to get more of the Mori Seiki scale companies.
Ruh roh, Biddlin. If I recall, Les Paul is Gibson, right? Hope it doesn’t have any of that Lacey-act violating Madagascan rosewood! 😉
[i]am i the only one who finds this comment deeply ironic?[/i]
Hey, read what I wrote again… I owned up to being one.
I’m think I am just more aware of my own misgivings.
I’m not sure about Bidlin though. I think he is a youngster.
“what i find insidious is someone putting forth a measure j/r project stating, hey it’s for a business park its not housing. it gets past. then a year later they come back and say, hey we have all of these jobs, where are we going to house the people?”
Who is doing that?
Lol.This one predates the Lacey act by a few years and I believe the fingerboard is African ebony . BTW, I have a newer Martin acoustic with a Richlite fretboard that I like as much as any rosewood or ebony board I’ve ever played. Richlite is recycled paper, used for counter tops, bowling lanes and tonewood.
Biddlin ;>)/
Frankly
[quote]and if we remove the students from the picture, it is growing alarmingly so.[/quote]
With this one phrase, I think that you nicely explained something that has bothered me for a long time.
When you and I post, it has often seemed to me that we are describing different communities. You write about a “lack of vibrancy” in Davis whereas I see Davis as a very vibrant community especially as compared with our surrounding communities of Woodland, Vacaville, West Sac, and Winters. When I go downtown, which is daily, usually on foot, since I live in Old East Davis, there are nearly always people out and about. People shopping, going to movies, going to restaurants, going on and off campus. I have often wondered if we even lived in the same town.
But now you write, “if we remove the students from the picture”. Well, perhaps if we removed the students, we might have the grumpy, old community that you seem to see ( although here I also see a very different story), however, we can’t remove the students. The students are and have been in the 34 years that I have been associated with Davis, an integral and vital part of this community. And they self refresh every four years bringing with them a new “youth crop”. Every year, some of the Davis graduates decide that Davis is the place for them to settle and raise their families. This is what I did. This is what a number of my colleagues have done.
What makes Davis unique in our region is the University. This is an asset that I don’t believe can be dismissed with the phrase “if we remove the students from the picture”. It would seem to me that these students are a large component of the foundation of this community and don’t ( especially in view of the planned additional 5,000) seem to be going anywhere.
The recession was a severe economic set back. That is undeniable and I agree that we need to face our economic realities. On the other hand, I see no need to turn ourselves into a carbon copy of any other, supposedly more vital or vibrant community, when we have a nearly endless source of self renewing vitality as part of the core of the Davis community,
“What makes Davis unique in our region is the University.”
That’s right and just as Folsom identifies with Intel, Davis will always be identified with UC.
If the community could wrap their minds around this fact we would see that the biggest factor contributing to the quality of life is the university bringing in our brightest people both students and faculty and billions of dollars annually.
All this limits to growth idealism; densification, preservation of ag land and zero population growth are a byproduct of what these anti-growth people learned in college in the 60’s,70’s and 80’s. It was at the end of this era that no growth took hold in Davis. The great failure of this era was the lack of appreciation of the technological revolution that would allow us to adapt better than anyone could have realized at the time. We need to get over what we were taught and accept the fact that we are the host community for a great university, an engine of that technological revolution, charged with research and education for the masses. We need to embrace our privileged location and let it bloom into its full potential instead of being obstacles stuck in the short sighted lessons inculcated in our undergraduate years.
As an example Medwoman you say you live where you can walk downtown. If something is built on the periphery you will still be able to walk downtown you will essentially be unaffected by it so why oppose it?
I don’t think most people have any problem with university-related and university-generated businesses locating here. They just don’t want Davis to get too big, too fast. You’ve said you’d be fine with Davis growing to 125,000 or more. Most people here, I think I can say quite confidently, disagree with that.
It’s the fast-growth, big-development advocates who have trouble “accepting” the prevailing view here.
I said a 2% growth rate gets us to 125,000 in 2050. I wonder what people would say about Davis being that big in 2050? Of course I won’t be playing much guitar that year I’ll be more likely to be pushing up daisies.
An interesting article today on densification you all should read.
http://www.newgeography.com/content/003873-how-can-we-be-so-dense-anti-sprawl-policies-threaten-americas-future
… and I don’t think Davis residents would agree with a 2% growth rate. I think people have made it clear what they think about Davis being that big in 2050. The voting record is there.
You can tilt at windmills, hector the residents and voters, try to shame them, apply guilt and scorn all you want. Or you can accept that some communities have different values than other communities.
Mr. Toad
[quote]As an example Medwoman you say you live where you can walk downtown. If something is built on the periphery you will still be able to walk downtown you will essentially be unaffected by it so why oppose it?[/quote]
For all the reasons I have posted many times. I do not believe that the presence of the University means that the town as a whole needs to expand to the degree that you would like to see. And I certainly will be affected, as would every resident of Davis, by the fundamental change in the nature of the community with the kind of growth you are advocating. I believe that it is possible to maintain the small city atmosphere ( I gave up on small town a long time ago) that attracted many of us to Davis in the first place. I believe that there is room in our area for many different types of communities. There are sprawling communities such as Vacaville and Fairfield, West Sacramento, Sacramento in abundance in our area. If people prefer that kind of atmosphere, there are plenty of options. So why do we feel the need to take the only University associated small city in the region and try to copy one of those models ? Why can we not relish the only community of its type in this area?
With the options that are available within a short travel time from Davis, I do not feel the least bit selfish or complacent, or out of date in my preference for a smaller, warmer community and feel I have the same right as everyone else to advocate for the type of community I prefer just as your are welcome to advocate for your preference without me making derogatory comments about your reasons as you have chosen to do in the past, although granted, not today.
Mr. Toad
[quote]If the community could wrap their minds around this fact we would see that the biggest factor contributing to the quality of life is the university bringing in our brightest people both students and faculty and billions of dollars annually.
[/quote]
I think that you are ignoring the fact that the University already does this, just not on an economic scale that you would seem to prefer. Since you used my example, I will too.
I first arrived here 30 years ago with no car, two suitcases and my bike. Like many other students, it was a challenge finding affordable housing, but I did by apartment sharing. I made it through medical school. Left Davis for my internship, government pay back and residency. Along the way, my husband and I rented, saved enough to buy a small starter house. Ultimately we were able to make the purchase of a larger house where I raised our kids.
While I am aware that the recession has made this progression more difficult for young people today, it has not made it an impossibility. I see a number people with lower incomes than mine who are purchasing homes in surrounding communities with the idea of eventually purchasing in Davis just as we did. I honestly do not see
this as tremendously onerous but a natural use of available resources in our own and surrounding communities.
Its so counterintuitive but, as the article I suggested people read demonstrates, densification also has negative consequences for the community. Consequences those opposed to growth tend to ignore. Especially for those living near downtown densification impacts you more than does peripheral growth.
[i]I first arrived here 30 years ago with no car, two suitcases and my bike. Like many other students, it was a challenge finding affordable housing, but I did by apartment sharing. I made it through medical school. Left Davis for my internship, government pay back and residency. Along the way, my husband and I rented, saved enough to buy a small starter house. Ultimately we were able to make the purchase of a larger house where I raised our kids. [/i]
I don’t think you are factoring the growth in imbalance of wages and Davis housing costs between your time and now. The path you took is much less available to kids today. You benefit from a lot of home equity. Time to give some back in allowing growth.
Matt: that just illustrates a point I’ve made before. Davis is not facing a paucity of jobs. If we build higher-end housing, we’re just adding more beds to a bedroom community.
Actually Don I completely disagree with your conclusion. The need for an influx of jobs isn’t rooted in the housing conum=ndrum, but rather in the “balance the City’s budget” conundrum.
There still is more savings that the City can realize on the expense side. I’ve argued that the annual maintenance and operations costs for the Wastewater Treatment Plant can be reduced by $1 million to $2 million per year if we update our technology, thereby allowing us to cut staffing from 19 FTEs to 8 FTEs (or lower), but cutting expenses isn’t going to be enough to bring the budget into balance. We need to look at ways to increase revenues without increasing the per capita burden on the citizens. Adding jobs, and the revenue those jobs bring with them is one way to increase the economic throughput of the Davis economy, and in the process generate additional revenue for the City.
If you add jobs without housing to a market that has a less than 5% rental vacancy rate, what happens? You’re advocating increasing jobs, for people to commute in to Davis, so that we can help balance our budget? Or are you, like Mr. Toad, advocating that we increase jobs and increase housing supply?
If so, where did you have in mind? And then, as usual, we’ll have gone full circle in this discussion.
Your numbers demonstrate that jobs are not the highest development priority for Davis. A steady growth of smaller employers, in infill locations, concurrent with a moderate increase in the housing stock, would not adversely affect our existing infrastructure, or require additional safety officers or another fire station. It would help to broaden our employment base, making us somewhat less reliant on the biggest employer(s) that drive our local economy. That is all a reasonable planning goal. Promoting job creation to balance the city budget? I think you’d have to pencil that out and show us realistically how it’s going to work.
I (and I believe you) look at multi-family rental housing as a separate category from single-family detached housing. Even the most zealous of no-growthers knows that if the University grows the number of apartment renters in Davis, the supply of apartments is going to have to go up. That University-driven sudent-centric reality is almost completely separate from any jobs growth driven housing issues.
Further, while the citizens of Davis and their elected leaders actually do have some ability to influence (control?) whether we create (or don’t create) policy that is new jobs-friendly, for all intents and purposes we have exactly zero ability to influence (control?) whether UCD adds students and exactly zero ability to influence (control?) whether UCD provides additional housing options for those added students.
Regarding the locations for added multi-family housing, my first choice are a set of 10-story high rise units on the A Street Intramural Field south of Toomey Field. My second choice is significant densification of current housing locations (Orchard Park and Solano Park are two that come to mind). If the rail relocation does actually continue on its ever improving trajectory, over 50 acres of rail right of way will be freed up within the City Limits. Lots of multi-family housing opportunities there.
5000 new undergraduates are just one issue.
[b]300+ tenure-track faculty.[/b]
Like number of [b]new staff,[/b] probably many more than that number.
Large number of[b] new graduate student positions.[/b]
The campus might provide [i]some[/i] of the housing for the undergrads. If we’re lucky, maybe 40%. Less is likely.
They [i]might[/i] provide [i]some[/i] of the housing for the new faculty, probably even less than 40%.
They might provide housing for some of the staff, but very likely a [i]much[/i] lower percentage. Most of the staff will end up living out of town and commuting in because of the shortage of affordable and rental housing here.
Our problem isn’t jobs.
What if you take students into account by either subtracting student occupied housing or calling being a student a job. I’m going to guess you end up with a huge housing deficit reflected in our low vacancy rate.
How are retirees counted another cohort that occupies lots of housing with empty nests because of prop 13 and a shortage of senior housing.
Those are both interesting questions and I wonder how the BAE study dealt with them. I think locally the Davis housing market is exceptional to traditional analyses. To me, the persistent, long-standing low vacancy rate is the number that really matters. Compared to surrounding communities, Davis has a much higher percentage of renters, a greater age spread, a much lower vacancy rate, and the average rent was much less affected by the recession (ie., it stayed high). We really haven’t built significant rental housing in a number of years; meanwhile the campus enrollment has increased steadily.
Frankly: [quote]Medwoman: “I first arrived here 30 years ago with no car, two suitcases and my bike. Like many other students, it was a challenge finding affordable housing, but I did by apartment sharing. I made it through medical school. Left Davis for my internship, government pay back and residency. Along the way, my husband and I rented, saved enough to buy a small starter house. Ultimately we were able to make the purchase of a larger house where I raised our kids.”
Frankly:
I don’t think you are factoring the growth in imbalance of wages and Davis housing costs between your time and now. The path you took is much less available to kids today. You benefit from a lot of home equity. Time to give some back in allowing growth.[/quote]
I’d add it isn’t just “kids” these days who are having a hard time finding affordable housing in Davis, both rentals and home purchases.
Have you priced rental homes? We pay over 2k/month for a wee itty bitty house for our family. Far more than our mortgage was back east…or even what our friends pay today in many parts of the country. They are appalled at how much we “throw away” each month for the privilege of living in Davis. Of course this means we aren’t saving that money each month as well…making it all the more difficult for us to break into the housing market here someday.
Medwoman: [quote]There are sprawling communities such as Vacaville and Fairfield, West Sacramento, Sacramento in abundance in our area. If people prefer that kind of atmosphere, there are plenty of options. So why do we feel the need to take the only University associated small city in the region and try to copy one of those models ? Why can we not relish the only community of its type in this area? [/quote]
I also love the small town feeling of Davis; growth doesn’t automatically mean sprawl. I’ve heard old-timers tell me that there was resistance to Village Homes back in the day. And North Davis. And areas developed in West Davis. And Mace Ranch. And Wildhorse.
Yes…know there are, “options that are available within a short travel time from Davis” but I don’t want to live there. I want to live HERE. I also prefer the smaller, warmer community of Davis.
Now I understand that just because I want to live some place doesn’t mean I can afford it, and we’ve reluctantly considered moving to save money for a home purchase and our kid’s college…maybe we will someday (I literally have nightmares about leaving behind this city).
Davis has a reputation for being snobby and not wanting to allow in a certain “type” of person. My family fits those descriptions in some ways. When I hear people say (and medwoman I am certain YOU didn’t mean this) that people who aren’t happy with the status quo in Davis are free to move to neighboring communities that, it stings a bit. Maybe we can call it Davis Privilege?
Don Shor said . . .
[i]300+ tenure-track faculty.
Like number of new staff, probably many more than that number.
Large number of new graduate student positions.
Our problem isn’t jobs. [/i]
Graduate student positions don’t add to the income base of the city. They are getting paid a pittance, if anything at all.
The staff positions are relatively low paid when compared to the kinds of Bayer-Agriquest jobs we just lost and Rob White’s efforts are targeting. In addition 300+ staff jobs will barely brin UCD back to the same level of staffing that existed prior to the Economic Downturn. Staff to student ratios will never reattain the level they were at prior to the downturn.
Tenure-track faculty are going to want to live in owner-occupied single-family detached homes, so they will do absolutely nothing in any positive way about the shortage of multi-family housing units.
With the above said, relying on the Government and the vagaries of Government funding makes us all captives of a single-threaded economy with minimal resilience. Why is that wise?
Good points Ginger. I agree that it is not only kids that face an impossible challenge living in this community of high-priced housing, it is everyone that has not yet reached a level of affluence that medwoman and I enjoy. Personally, I am willing to give up some of my artificially-inflated property values to help reach a level of greater affordability for working-class families.
But at the same time I would start developing on the periphery to add professional jobs and retail.
I will wager that at least 10 years from now, and probably 5 years, we will read a report that UCD is experiencing significant lower applications and will be challenged to prevent contraction. I will wager it, but more importantly I will be here to plant signs in the yards of all the people that denied this and helped ensure that Davis will have even greater budget problems as the milk of soft UCD money starts to dry up… to proclaim loudly and brightly that they were WRONG!
[i]With the above said, relying on the Government and the vagaries of Government funding makes us all captives of a single-threaded economy with minimal resilience. Why is that wise? [/i]
I completely with what Matt said.
agree. geesh
“I will wager that at least 10 years from now, and probably 5 years, we will read a report that UCD is experiencing significant lower applications and will be challenged to prevent contraction.”
I hope not.
[quote]I will wager that at least 10 years from now, and probably 5 years, we will read a report that UCD is experiencing significant lower applications and will be challenged to prevent contraction. [/quote]
I feel very confident that you are wrong.
Moreover, Intel and other private companies have been less reliable in terms of jobs than UC.
[url]http://www.informationweek.com/newsletters/daily/intel-cuts-10500-jobs-in-continuing-rest/192700087[/url]
UCD has been a stable, reliable employer. Davis has gotten through the economic downturn much better than any of our neighbors.
[quote]relying on the Government and the vagaries of Government funding makes us all captives of a single-threaded economy with minimal resilience. Why is that wise? [/quote]
Have I ever said we need to rely completely on government funding and a single employer? No. I advocate reasonable growth of small and medium companies in the land that is available. Davis will always be dominated by [i]two[/i] major employers: UCD, and the state of California. It is wise to encourage small companies to continue to start and grow here. I have never said otherwise.
Tell us what you advocate for business and residential development, Matt. I’d be curious.
In a discussion yesterday a statistic was shared with me that is worthy of discussion. Bay Area Economics (BAE) recently took a look at the jobs/housing picture in Davis and found that (if I understood what was said correctly) if you tallied up A) the total of all the jobs in Davis and B) the total of all the residents of Davis who have jobs, and then subtract A) from B) you end up with an excess of 3,000 people with jobs over the number of Davis jobs. Said another way, Davis could add 3,000 jobs and have enough current housing to accommodate the new employees here in Davis . . . assuming that the newly created employees purchased the homes of Davis residents with jobs outside Davis when those homes came on the market for sale.
The person citing the BAE statistics went on to say that the 3,000 net number is actually much lower than reality because all the people who commute into Davis from Woodland, etc. are included in the Jobs in Davis count. While that is true, there is also a netting down of the 3,000 number because of households where one person works in Davis and a second person works outside of Davis.
Even after the netting up and netting down processes are completed, the housing market realities that a substantial portion (the vast majority?) of current Davis residents who work outside Davis have no interest in moving away from Davis any time in the near future.
Regardless I found that statistical discussion interesting.
Retail is competing with Internet and Internet is winning on convenience.
Don, my thoughts on residential housing were laid out in my 03:42 PM post in which I said, [i]”Regarding the locations for added multi-family housing, my first choice are a set of 10-story high rise units on the A Street Intramural Field south of Toomey Field. My second choice is significant densification of current housing locations (Orchard Park and Solano Park are two that come to mind). If the rail relocation does actually continue on its ever improving trajectory, over 50 acres of rail right of way will be freed up within the City Limits. Lots of multi-family housing opportunities there.”[/i]
You must have missed that post. I also support the [u]concept[/u] that Jim Kidd has laid out for the senior housing complex on B Street near Central Park. Unfortunately the [u]specific proposal[/u] he is currently circulating is demonstrably inferior to his original proposal. If he works with the neighbors, that concept may yet achieve a positive contribution to senior housing in Davis. The rebuild of the Phi Delta Theta fraternity house at the corner of 4th and C Streets was a horribly missed opportunity. A four story senior complex at that location with underground parking would have been a much higher and better use.
If the swap of the Shriners property for the lower 234 acres of the Mace 391 property had come to fruition and the lower portion of Shriners had become the new location of a highly accessible Davis Community Gardens, then I might be inclined to build a new City Hall, School District, County Administration Building on the location of the current Community Gardens just down 5th Street from your Redwood Barn location. Then I would transform the current City Hall and School District and County Administration Building sites along A and B Streets into infill housing oriented toward seniors. The Senior Center would be right across the baseball park from that senior oriented housing. It would make for a very supportive infill environment.
Regarding business development, I don’t think you and I are all that far apart. I strongly support a university-centric complex on Nishi. The soil quality north and west of Sutter Davis Hospital makes that location high on both your hit list and mine. Where you and I differ is that you appear to want to let the Bayer AgriQuests of the world go away from Davis once they get to a critical mass. I’m not willing to simply give up on the idea of keeping that economic vitality in Davis.
Does that lay it out clearly enough for you?
Don Shor said . . .
[i]”[b]Have I ever said we need to rely completely on government funding and a single employer?[/b] No. I advocate reasonable growth of small and medium companies in the land that is available. Davis will always be dominated by two major employers: UCD, and the state of California. It is wise to encourage small companies to continue to start and grow here. I have never said otherwise.”[/i]
For all practical purposes you have indeed said exactly that when you have advocated for simply letting the Bayer Agriquests of Davis go to other cities without as much as a whimper. You may not think you are saying it, but your words speak volumes.
Matt, I have to take you to task for not leading by example just as i have with Don. You live in a community with a bucolic golf course as a centerpiece and then think we should build some sort of Cabrini Green 10 story monstrosity in the center of town. You really ought to read that article I referenced from New Geography on why densification sucks. Everyone should read it.
Here it is again:
http://www.newgeography.com/content/003873-how-can-we-be-so-dense-anti-sprawl-policies-threaten-americas-future
Toad, the bucolic golf course currently has a proposal before Yolo County to replace substantial potions of its land with non-SFR homes (duplexes, triplexes and/or quadplexes). We already have 37 units in quadplexes. And at a recent DSIDE meeting one of the City of Davis residents who is a member of the El Macero Country Club made an empassioned plea for additional members to join citing the “real possibility that the Club is facing the spectre of closing and replacing [u]all [/u]its fairways with homes. So while I accept your tasking me to task in the spirit it is raised in, Paul Harvey would be unhappy if you didn’t hear the rest of the story.
Now with that out of the way. Here is why I support the A Street Intramural Field high rises. First, they would be subject to University rules, and if I were the University I would make one of the lease restrictions a “no car in Davis for the whole school year” restriction. Bicycles galore, but no cars. Second, the high rises would be right on the edge of campus and the students streaming out of them each day would be immediately adjacent (in walking distance) to their classrooms and other campus activities. What was the line in the 10cc song? ” Art for Art’s sake, Convenience for God’s sake.” Third, the high rises would be right on the edge of downtown Davis and the students streaming out of them each day would be immediately adjacent (in walking distance) to the businesses and restaurants and other downtown activities. Again, what was the line in the 10cc song? ” Art for Art’s sake, Money for God’s sake.”
I don’t propose a myriad of 10 story high rises all over the City and Campus, just this targeted approach to help address the issues that student growth in the future will pose for both the University and the residents of Davis. For that matter it might help address the problems that the high rate of conversions of single family homes from owner-occupation to student-rentals cause in virtually all of Davis’ current SFR neighborhoods . . . some worse than others.
[quote]For all practical purposes you have indeed said exactly that when you have advocated for simply letting the Bayer Agriquests of Davis go to other cities without as much as a whimper. You may not think you are saying it, but your words speak volumes.[/quote]
Where do you propose Bayer put a building in Davis? We don’t have the space. So your own “words that speak volumes” are that you advocate peripheral annexation for the purpose of building a big site for companies like Bayer. But you won’t say it.
Is that your economic development strategy?
There is no likelihood that UCD will build any high-rise housing before 2020. So that is a fantasy. Is that your residential development strategy?
Get real.
Don Shor said . . .
[i]”Where do you propose Bayer put a building in Davis? We don’t have the space. So your own “words that speak volumes” are that you advocate peripheral annexation for the purpose of building a big site for companies like Bayer. But you won’t say it.
Is that your economic development strategy?”[/i]
Don, I’m not sure what it is that you don’t understand about the words [i]”Regarding business development, I don’t think you and I are all that far apart. I strongly support a university-centric complex on Nishi. The soil quality north and west of Sutter Davis Hospital makes that location high on both your hit list and mine.”[/i]
What am I missing?
Then exactly how do you and I differ sufficiently for you to write
[quote]you appear to want to let the Bayer AgriQuests of the world go away from Davis once they get to a critical mass.[/quote]
[quote]Matt, I have to take you to task for not leading by example just as i have with Don. You live in…[/quote]
Remind us again where exactly you live, what you do, and what your real name is?
Don, as I said in completing that quoted statement of mine in its full context, [quote]Where you and I differ is that I’m not willing to simply give up on the idea of keeping that economic vitality in Davis.[/quote]
You have clearly stated in past posts, [quote]Yes, and Measure R reflects the will of the voters. Davis voters have expressed a strong preference for slow growth. In so doing, Davis voters have basically written businesses the size of Bayer out of the planning process. We need to stop framing this discussion in terms of Bayer and companies of that size. They aren’t going to happen here, for a lot of reasons.[/quote]
That is the simple answer to how you and I differ sufficiently.
The problem is that the question you keep repeating and repeating and repeating isn’t a “how we differ” question, it is a where we differ question . . . and the simple answer to both your where and my where is the same . . . Nishi and the Class 4 alkali soils to the west and north of Sutter Davis Hospital.
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