Today we present two essays on Measure V, one in favor and one against
With three weeks left to Election Day, Measure V is the talk of the town
NOTE: What follows are two essays on Measure V, one in favor of passage and one against.
I am running them at the same time so there will be no back-and-forth and no rebuttals. Just pure advocacy on both sides of this issue.
Neither author had any access to what the other was presenting. In fact, neither author knew who the other author was.
I did not offer any guidelines as to content or word count.
And I did not in any way edit either of these essays. I even allowed the authors to use exclamation points and Oxford commas if they wished.
Neither author received any compensation, other than a sincere thank you.
Because this format does not allow for the essays to run side by side, I flipped an 1883 silver dollar to decide which essay would run first.
No one knows if there is any advantage whatsoever in what order the essays are presented, but I doubt there is, especially in a town as intelligent as Davis. Those who think otherwise can read them in reverse order if they prefer.
These essays are free to anyone who wishes to read them, reproduce them or share them with others.
Readers are, of course, encouraged to offer their opinions in the “Comments” section that follows the essays.
An argument in favor of Measure V
By Sandy Whitcombe
Sandy Whitcombe is Co-Project Lead for Village Homes Davis
Davis Deserves a Plan
Bob Dunning has spent decades chronicling what makes Davis the City of All Things Right and Relevant. The bike paths, the greenbelts, Saturday night football at Aggie Stadium, the kind of place where you run into your neighbor at the Co-op and end up talking for forty-five minutes about something that matters.
And just like Bob, we know this town. We love this town. We want it to thrive.
But when young families can’t afford to put down roots here, Davis loses not just neighbors, but customers, tax revenue, schools, and the everyday energy that keeps our community vibrant.
From Local Families
We are longtime Davis families who helped bring our North Davis Greenbelt homes and Northstar neighborhoods to life – with parks, greenbelts, ponds and habitat we all love.
But that was a generation ago, and since then, Davis voters haven’t approved a single ballot measure for new family housing.
Now, we are at a watershed moment in Davis history.
For us, sixty-odd years of raising families and building neighborhoods in Davis has culminated in the opportunity to bring forward Measure V. Decades in the making, Village Farms Davis is our best effort to provide a long-term plan for the diverse homes that we need – while incorporating all the beautiful things that we love about Davis.
In (Clearly) the Best Location
In the heart of North Davis, Village Farms is the missing puzzle piece on our map. It completes a natural northern border to Davis.
It weaves together existing neighborhoods from Northstar to Cannery to Wildhorse and beyond, and will make them even better for it, with connectivity and amenities for all to enjoy.
It’s next to transit, and walking and biking distance from shopping, schools, campus, and downtown – the very definition of sustainable growth!
With Homes for All Incomes
Our housing plan provides options at every rung in the ladder. Twenty percent of all homes in Village Farms will be permanently affordable and will include rental options for very-low and low-income families as well as ownership options for moderate-income households.
“How?” you might ask. It starts with the largest ever, 16-acre, shovel-ready land dedication to the City of Davis, who will then choose its preferred Affordable Housing Partner. This dedication is in a prime location next to the new expansive community park and is within walking distance to pretty much everything.
And if you’re wondering, land dedications to the City have proven to be the most effective model for delivering affordable housing in Davis: from Twin Pines on F Street, to New Harmony on Cowell, to Adelante on 5th, and many others all over town.
Add to that an unprecedented donation of $6 million toward construction. This plan will surely help get these families into the homes they need.
As for the other 80% of homes? The Village Farms market-rate homes have the best chance to offer young families an opportunity to buy a home in Davis and start building nest eggs of their own.
The key phrase: attainable-by-design. Most of these are townhomes, bungalows, and small-lot homes in a range of sizes – with hundreds of them in the 900-1,200 square foot range. Using current prices for homes in Davis ($500 per square foot) these are estimated to start in the $400,000s and $500,000s.
These aren’t condos with steep HOA fees. They’re small and attached homes with yards for children and pets.
That’s why Village Farms is expected to bring 1,147 new students to our schools. Our schools are the pride of our community - but they’re on the decline. Each child filling an otherwise-empty classroom chair means state funding of $12,000+ per year.
We’ll give you a minute to do the math, because that’s a very big number.
And Every Shade of Green
If you agree that incorporating green spaces throughout town is one of the things that makes Davis so special, Measure V is your friend.
More than 50 percent of the Village Farms site will be preserved as parks, open space, greenbelts, habitat, and agriculture. That includes a new, 47-acre habitat preserve and a large new community park across from Nugget Center with playfields and new community gathering spots.
The project also completes the Davis Bike Loop, finally connecting Northstar to Wildhorse with bike crossings that many residents have been waiting, well, just about forty years for.
A Healthier City Budget
We are pleased to report genuinely good news for Davis wallets. The project will generate millions in ongoing net revenue for the City of Davis, funding city services, road improvements, and long-deferred infrastructure. No new taxes on existing residents. This time, growth is paying for growth, and then some.
Let’s Talk About the Facts
In a city where, as Bob once observed, “half the residents have a Ph.D. and the other half think they should,” we know that Davis voters will want to study the details.
While the opposition spreads fears about flooding, toxics, and traffic, you can find links to the official city and environmental documents below. We also highly recommend our summarized Myths and Facts page where you can find detailed, sourced responses to every claim.
A Word on Distractions
Some opponents of Village Farms may try to divert your attention to what they say will be better options on the horizon. This is a common tactic.
Don’t be distracted:
• Village Farms is the only infill option in Davis
• It’s the only option in the long-term plan for city services.
• It’s decades in the making, brought by local families with sixty years of investment in this community designing and building homes, greenbelts, parks and habitat.
Endorsements
Our endorsement list is long and diverse and tells a compelling story. Environmental advocates. School board leaders and the Teachers Association. The Sacramento Bee editorial board. Local business owners. Current and former elected officials. Longtime Davis residents from across the political spectrum.
You can see the full and growing list of endorsements at yesdavismeasurev.com.
Parting Thoughts
Bob Dunning has spent fifty-five years writing about the Davis worth reading about. The families behind Village Farms have spent sixty years planning and building homes for the people who make it that way.
If you want more of what makes Davis great, Vote Yes on V.
Learn more about the project and seven local families behind Measure V at https://www.yesdavismeasurev.com
Link directly to City Documents https://www.cityofdavis.org/city-hall/community-development/development-projects/village-farms-davis.
An argument against Measure V
By Roberta Millstein
Roberta Millstein is Professor Emerit (not a typo) of Philosophy at UC Davis, where she specializes in philosophy of ecology and evolution as well as environmental ethics. Her book, The Land Is Our Community: Aldo Leopold’s Environmental Ethic for the New Millennium, is published open access with the University of Chicago Press. She served on Davis’s Open Space and Habitat Commission for over 10 years, including a stint as Chair.
Village Farms Lacks the Commitments Needed for Today’s Climate Crisis
I plan on voting “no” on Measure V — “no” on the Village Farms project — and I urge you to do the same. There are many reasons to do so, but my reasons here center on environmental ones, particularly with respect to mitigating climate change impacts. We need housing that minimizes impacts to the environment while providing affordable homes where people can live, work, and thrive. I do not believe that Village Farms will do that.
To explain why I believe this, I will draw on parts of the Sierra Club’s Urban Infill Policy. But I need to give a few caveats first. One is that our local Sierra Club group (the Yolano Group), on whose Management Committee I serve, voted not to take a position on Village Farms, so this is my opinion alone, not that of the Sierra Club, even though I am drawing on Sierra Club policy. Second is that I am not working on the “No on Measure V” campaign, and so my arguments may differ from the campaign’s a little bit, at least in emphasis. Third is that I do not claim these arguments are original to me, although I don’t believe they have been put quite this way.
Now, some might take issue with my starting point: They might say that Village Farms is sprawl, not infill. And that may very well be. But I don’t want to get into a semantic debate about what infill really is or what sprawl really is, because I think it’s beside the point. Even if Village Farms is infill, it still is not a good project.
Let’s start with affordable housing. The Sierra Club policy supports “affordable housing accessible to all.” Why? Because “our resilience to the threat of climate change begins with our social, cultural and economic resilience, which depends upon inclusive and fair communities.” I think this is absolutely correct both as an ethical matter and a pragmatic matter of what is sustainable and workable.
Proponents of Village Farms tout its affordable housing. The problem is simply that neither the Deed-Restricted Affordable Housing (you qualify by income) nor the affordable-by-design housing (townhomes, etc.) are guaranteed in the Baseline Features. Anything that isn’t in the Baseline Features — the text that is on our ballots — is subject to change by a future City Council. And we have seen with projects such as Bretton Woods, the Cannery, and Willowbank Park that previous councils have been very willing to allow developers to back out of their promises.
I could quote the text at greater length to prove my point (and have done so in a Davis Enterprise op-ed), but I urge readers to take a look at their ballot pamphlets themselves. The Baseline Features only specify “up to” 360 units of Affordable Housing, and developers can wait until the 150th market unit is built before the Affordable Housing is commenced — if it is at all. The Baseline Features refer voters to the council-changeable Development Agreement, where it is clarified that if the City decides it cannot build 100 units of Affordable Housing, it “may elect to request Developer to construct the units” (wiggle word emphasis added).
So, we may get only 100 units of Affordable Housing, much less 360. Or we may get zero units — the Baseline Features, as written, would permit that. As for the affordable-by-design housing, the Baseline Features are silent on numbers, and thus the numbers are changeable. The only (very open-ended) commitment is that there will be some Residential High-Density, Residential Medium-Density, and Residential Low-Density zoning designations.
And it doesn’t have to be this way. The Baseline Features for the Willowgrove proposal are much more straightforward: They contain a commitment for 250 deed-restricted affordable units, period. They further commit that the “Affordable site [will be] graded, stubbed for utilities, and access roads constructed prior to the first market rate occupancy permit.”
I have to ask why the Village Farms developers resisted making commitments like these; indeed, they resisted committing to even as much as they did, with Sandy Whitcombe at one point (a council meeting, Dec. 16) pronouncing that putting anything at all about Affordable Housing in the Baseline Features was a “line in the sand” that they would not cross. Obviously, they relented, but that initial resistance, together with the wiggle words used, make me seriously doubt the developers’ actual commitment to affordable housing.
On to other subjects. The Sierra Club states:
“Development should be dense, inclusive, and located within or connected to existing communities and neighborhoods. New development should be designed to make neighborhoods walkable, and neighborhoods in the city and metropolitan contexts should be linked together by convenient high quality transit prioritized in regional, state and national transportation expenditure plans.”
We have already seen that the Village Farms project isn’t actually committed to density and inclusivity through the Baseline Features. But it’s also lacking in the other mentioned respects.
With respect to connectivity, again, the Baseline Features initially seem promising but then disappoint. They state that the Project “will implement” two bicycle and pedestrian grade-separated crossings: one on the west side of the project (F Street and the UPRR) and one on the east side of the project (Pole Line Road). Proponents tout these two crossings as “legally binding,” but the Baseline Features themselves acknowledge that that the crossing over the railroad can only proceed “subject to the railroad’s approval.” Here it’s important to note that construction on the Nishi project — with the same Whitcombe developer — still hasn’t begun because of the challenges of a grade-separated railroad crossing. So the west side railroad crossing is actually a big question mark. Also of concern is the Development Agreement’s specification that the City could end up having to reimburse developers up to 80% of the cost of the two crossings. This would be a large sum of money that ultimately taxpayers would be on the hook for.
Perhaps even more concerning is the absence of a commitment to a grade-separated crossing of the busy Covell Blvd. at the south end of the project, which would connect the project to the Oak Tree Plaza, an essential component for making the housing walkable and bikeable. (The developers do commit to pay to “study” a possible crossing).
Indeed, the very design of the project hinders its connectivity to the Oak Tree Plaza. There is a planned park adjacent to Covell Blvd., which means that residents who live north of the park would have to cross the park to go to Oak Tree Plaza. Human nature being what it is, the less convenient something is, the less likely it is that people will do it (and I am no different). Proponents tout the closeness to shopping, but in fact the design of Village Farms undermines that closeness.
Moreover, that same park, that same lack of housing close to Covell Blvd., will also hinder the provision of the “convenient high quality transit” that the Sierra Club calls for. Transit is responsive to demand, but without convenience, there will be less demand. The prospect for high quality housing with the current design of the project is dim.
In short, the weak/absent commitments to affordable housing, to connectivity, and to transit mean that Village Farms is not designed with our current climate crisis in mind. It could be, though. A number of citizens have called for a “no” vote with the recommendation that we urge the developers to come back to voters with a denser project — one with firm commitments to its environmental features — that is completely south of the channel (which, in addition to improving designing for climate change, would eliminate/dramatically reduce concerns about toxics and the floodplain). I endorse this line of thinking.
There is another line of thinking that says that any housing is good for Davis. But polls have shown, and I agree, that what Davis really needs is affordable housing, not more housing for the wealthy. Also, expensive housing is likely to yield few families with children; Village Farms will not prevent the closure of our elementary schools, especially when you add in the long timeline before housing is actually available.
Village Farms would be sited on precious ag land. If we are to convert it, we should do so with the health of our human and nonhuman communities in mind. We should have a housing project that is environmentally sound. We need to send it back to the drawing board and do better.
Please join me in voting “no” on Measure V — “no” on Village Farms.
Reach Bob Dunning at bobdunning@thewaryone.com