History of Current Davis Politics
Jon Li
Davis Political Division on Growth Question
Davis politics is dominated by a faction that is anti-growth who call themselves “Progressive”. They have one litmus test: being anti-growth; if a candidate for city council doesn’t pass the test, they are demonized as pro-growth, or moderate/liberal.
Before the Progressives.
Prior to 1959, UC Davis was the agricultural extension of UC Berkeley, and Davis was a sleepy little college town. Students attended UCD for some ag classes, and then went to Berkeley to complete their undergraduate degree. The politics of the community was as conservative as any farm town in the California Central Valley, and voted Republican in most state and national elections.
Even today, UCD’s academic orientation is relatively conservative: most universities have 25% science students where UCD has 60% biological science students, with an additional College of Engineering, as well as strong Letters and Sciences majors in mathematics, chemistry, physics and geology, all of which attract students with a political orientation that is more conservative or indifferent.
In 1959, UCD became a general campus, and drew a more liberal faculty, as well as a more urban student body from the San Francisco bay area and Southern California. During the 1960s, the local politics was dominated by the downtown business community, and the campus pretty much ignored the city government. Then in 1966, a small group of university faculty promoted the idea of bike lanes on the city’s streets, and succeeded in electing two new city council members who supported the bicycle ideas, overturning the campaigning incumbents who rejected the bicycle advocacy.
Emergence of the Progressives
The most famous election in Davis was in 1972. The 1958 Davis General Plan had forecast that Davis would triple in population every decade: 8,000 in 1960, 24,000 in 1970, and grow to 72,000 by 1980. Three community/campus oriented candidates challenged these ideas and were swept into office, in no small part due to the new voting influence of college students with the new 18-year-old voting right. The winners were attorney Joan Poulos, UCD health and safety officer Dick Holdstock (who had a rich British labor tradition and a love for traditional British/Irish/Scot music) and former ASUCD President Bob Black.
In the closing days of the previous council term of Mayor Vigfus Asmundson, the council appointed a committee of 110 citizens to develop a new General Plan. The 1972-4 process was influenced by the 1973 OPEC Arab Oil embargo, and focused on energy conservation, things like solar energy in land use and housing design. The plan was characterized by “slow growth” because it looked out to housing growth based on a population goal of 50,000 rather than the previous goal of about 70,000.
At that point, the label “progressive” implied a constellation of ideas: slow growth, energy conservation, public transportation and bicycles. An example was that in 1978 the city led a campaign called “Operation Prime Time”: don’t use your stove/oven until after 6 p.m., and instead of using your air conditioner 24 hours a day from April to October, open your windows in the evenings, and close them in the mornings, letting the delta breeze cool the inside of your apartment or home. Davis saved so much electricity during the peak load period in the weekday afternoons that PG&E gave the city a check for $100,000 three years in a row. (The energy company probably saved over a million dollars a year by not firing up those power plants during peak demand by businesses that were forced to use their air conditioners during the hot summer afternoons.)
Attempting to tighten growth
In 1982, while Ann Evans was being elected to the city council, she sponsored an initiative to limit growth to 50,000 people until the year 2000, which passed 2 to 1. It seemed realistic, since the CalTrans signs at the city limits said 38,000. The reality in 1984 was that Davis was already at 48,000. The 1974 General Plan had forecast 50,000 by 1990, and in actuality the city council in 1989 would pay $50,000 for a survey to prove that the population exceeded 50,000 so that the city would be eligible for millions of dollars in additional federal funds.
In 1986, as part of Mike Corbett’s city council campaign, his campaign created Measure L, to have the city grow as slow as legally possible, which received 58% of the vote, a majority but not a mandate.
For land use planning purposes, a city has two boundaries: its city limits line, and something called its “sphere of influence.” In 1986, most of Davis’ sphere of influence line was its city limits line. Frank Ramos of West Sacramento wanted to develop to the east (what is now known as Mace Ranch). A tiny sliver of the land was inside the sphere of influence and within the city’s jurisdiction; in May, 1986, Ramos’ request to develop was unanimously rejected by both the city planning commission and the city council.
But because of the city’s narrowly defined sphere of influence, most of the Ramos land was in the planning jurisdiction of the county. In October, with both Davis county supervisors Bob Black and Betsey Marchand voting no, the Yolo County Board of Supervisors approved Ramos’ Mace Ranch development.
This severely strained relations between the city and the county to the point where a written agreement had to be developed and approved by both the board of supervisors and the city council. The conditions of the agreement are that the county will not unilaterally approve any development on the city’s border, the city’s sphere of influence extends well over a mile beyond the city limits in every direction, and in exchange the city “passes through” millions of dollars each year from the taxes for development improvements in the city’s redevelopment area. (It is referred to as the “pass through agreement”.)
The county gave the city 15 months (to December, 1987) to complete a new general plan. The city council majority of Ann Evans, Dave Rosenberg and Mike Corbett decided in private, on the phone, with staff, between each council meeting, what they wanted – and they announced their decisions at the council meetings. (This was in complete violation of the Brown public meeting act.) They justified it by stating that they were under pressure from the county. They decided to put the overcrossing at Pole Line Road instead of further east at County Road 103, where it could have had a cloverleaf with freeway access. It was subsequently proven that traffic consultants Omni-Means dummied their numbers to support the Pole Line decision at the council majority’s behest, and Omni-Means was forced in court to pay back what the city had paid them.
The 1987 General Plan had enormous infrastructure needs, which at first penciled out at $150 million, and then started growing. A park, a freeway interchange, Mace overcrossing expansion, two parking structures. It adds up, and when the city actually gets close to putting the project out to bid, the prices never are less, and they are often much more than expected.
Who is going to pay for it?
Why should the 50,000 people who were then living in Davis? They didn’t have anything to do with the new plan, it was written by the council majority and staff. So the city council and staff came up with this rationale: the plan goes from 50,000 people to roughly 75,000, so the existing residents have a nexus of responsibility for 2/3rds of the burden of cost, and the new residents 1/3rd. But since the city council has the discretion to control the distribution of the construction tax, the council decided to use the new resident’s construction tax for the existing residents’ burden, and then create a new nexus tax for the new residents to pay the other third as well.
So Davis has a donut of post-1987 homes that may be paying ten times as much in property tax as someone who lives in one of the older homes. The donut includes: Northstar, Wildhorse, Mace Ranch, much of South Davis, Aspen, and Evergreen.
Change in 1990
Rosenberg, Evans and Corbett had the three votes to control who was mayor, and they traded it around between themselves. Evans did not run for re-election, and Corbett was defeated. The council had no true progressives, and was the most conservative council since the early 1960s. By ordinance, the council established having whomever came in first be the Mayor Pro Tem for two years, and then Mayor the final two years of their term.
By 1986, there were very few lots available for building, and there was a five year period with tremendous unmet demand for more houses: starters and mover-uppers. The council started focusing on implementing the developments approved in the 1987 General Plan. Davis made the next step in every direction, north, east, south and west, and shifted from being a small town where people were familiar with most of it, to a small city where there were a lot of unfamiliar places that had grown since the previous drive through that area. For too many, it was no longer convenient to ride a bicycle, and a car seemed like a necessity.
To some, the housing construction was an orgy. Artist Julie Partansky ran for the city council in 1992 with a message to stop growth, and the “Progressives” were reborn. From that point on, the progressives declared that anyone who does not oppose growth is a moderate, and that has been the line in the sand of Davis politics ever since.
Moderates would say that progressives feel that Davis is nice the way it is and shouldn’t change. They are usually environmentalists who want to preserve prime agricultural land and endangered species. Many receive income from the university or the state government, and seem indifferent to the needs of the local business community or even the free enterprise system.
It seems like Davis politics is progressives opposing whatever is being proposed.
General Plan Revision
One person (Jon Li) pushed the city for over 5 years to have a citizen based General Plan process. After 5 years of the 1987 General Plan, the city was required by state law to update the housing element of the general plan (for most cities in California, housing is the single element that deserves serious reconsideration every 5 years). In 1994, the council initiated a citizens planning process. It initially had 14 committees with over 200 people, who met for two years and completed their work. Committee issues ranged from housing, transportation, land use and open space (which are state mandated elements), to economics, health and social services, and computers (areas which are not state-required elements of the city’s General Plan). Unfortunately, one committee, the Growth Management/Neighborhood Preservation committee, prolonged the process an additional 4 years, costing the city over $1 million in consultant fees and more than that in staff time. Since a majority of the city council at that time was “progressive,” they usually accommodated the demands of the vociferous growth management committee, at the expense of earlier input by other committees. The resulting 2001 plan is a thick testament to wordy governmental restrictions. It sure looks like the “progressives” goal is to shut down the city government so that nothing can change. The word “progressive” is a catchall buzz word for opposing something.
2000 Election
In 2000, as the General Plan process was winding down, Julie Partansky was finishing her two year term as mayor. Her supporters did a survey, and found that she would not be re-elected to a third term. Sue Greenwald and Mike Harrington successfully claimed the progressive label in being elected. During Greenwald’s first two years on the council, Ken Wagstaff was Mayor, and he let Greenwald talk as much as she wanted, and she talked a lot more than everyone else put together. Staff didn’t get much accomplished. When you actually listen to Greenwald, there are only more problems than if you just catch soundbites. Greenwald never gets to the point where there is a solution or a conclusion that works for all the parties involved. From Mayor Wagstaff’s time on, Greenwald has always presumed that she is so intelligent and well informed that she should be given as much time as she wants, regardless of how relevant or useful her comments may be. City Manager John Meyer left to become the UCD Vice Chancellor for Resource Management and Planning.
The anti-growth activists placed Measure J on the ballot, which required a citizens vote on any development approved by the city council that would add land to the city. It easily passed.
In 2002, Ruth Asmundson and Ted Puntillo both announced for the city council campaign the summer before the March election. Both were well organized and raised almost $20,000 each by the end of the summer, and were the front runners throughout the campaign.
The new council divided the Finance and Economics Commission into a Public Finance and Budget Commission and a Business and Economic Development Commission (which took Jon Li six years to convince the council to do) and a Bicycle Advisory Commission (which took Jon Li one conversation with Ruth Asmundson to set it in motion).
In 2004, Sue Greenwald, Don Saylor and Stephen Souza were elected to the council. Two significant points about this election: 1) the Covell Village Partners were trying to gain city approval, and could count on Asmundson’s and Puntillo’s support, and they actively worked to get Saylor and Souza elected, which did happen, giving the Covell Partners on overwhelming 4 to 1 majority – which they flaunted, which may even have contributed to their 2005 defeat at the polls by a 40% to 60 % margin (which I will address next). 2) Developer Steve Guidaro tried to influence the outcome of the city council race; he was sloppy, wasteful and perhaps illegal. An example is that he ran a robo-poll survey a few weeks before the election, but it only listed six of the eight candidates on the ballot. An election campaign increases in intensity as election day approaches, and with one week to go before the vote, Guidaro’s antics in the local community was the most controversial thing about the election. The day before the election, a dozen local elected officials were pictured on the front page of the Davis Enterprise standing in front of the city council chambers holding a large banner with Guidaro’s office phone number, asking people to call his office to complain about his dirty campaign tactics. (A different slant on this particular story is presented in the Davis wiki analysis of progressives vs. moderates.) The significance for historical purposes is that when Guidaro was finally confronted about his inappropriate campaign behavior by the Enterprise reporter, Guidaro actually believed he was benefiting the people he was working with, so he said half Stan Forbes and half Mike Harrington, which was true, and 5% Don Saylor, which was not true. During the final week before the election, the fecal matter from Guidaro was flying everywhere, and enough of it discouraged voters about Don Saylor that he came in second to Sue Greenwald, and so he lost on the question of who would be mayor 2006 to 2008.
During the 2004-6 period, Ruth Asmundson was mayor. She did a lot behind the scenes to clear up administrative details and tie together loose ends. Commissioner terms had been haphazard, inconsistent, and some times stretched out indefinitely. It took a lot of coordination and communication to work things out. For the first time, the city council met with each commission.
Covell Village and Cannery Park
With residential development to both the east and the west, the two parcels in northern Davis together look like the tooth in a jack-o-lantern, ripe for development. For now, it has replaced the Mace Ranch curve as the symbol of Davis’ commitment to protecting prime agricultural land from residential development.
There were many reasons why the Covell Village approval measure on the ballot (Measure X) was doomed to defeat at the polls, 40% yes, 60% no. Some key ones include:
- Cannery Park: a third of the land; is inside city limits – where Covell Village is outside the city and requires a Measure J vote; is zoned industrial, not residential; is land locked to one traffic intersection, with blocking to the south by the Covell Boulevard overpass and blocked access to the west by the railroad tracks to Woodland. Cannery Park needs cooperative planning with Covell Village for car traffic access. But Covell Village Partners want exclusive approval of their property, independent of Cannery Park, even in opposition to it. The Partners have actively criticized public officials who advocate co-joint planning between the adjacent parcels.
- Sense of entitlement: the Covell Village Partners acted like the city is obligated to accommodate them. Two of the four key partners are among the nicest people in town, Bill Roe and Bill Streng. But the tone was driven by the other two partners, John Whitcombe and Lor Shepard, who expected support and acceptance.
- Mike Corbett as the designer: Corbett deserves to share the credit for the design of Village Homes in western Davis with his former wife, Judy Corbett. However, as a member of the Davis city council, he pretty much did whatever Dave Rosenberg and Ann Evans told him to do. Corbett lost his bid for re-election in 1990 even though he was the sitting mayor, and then disappeared from the public eye. The Covell Village Partners decided to build from the popularity of Village Homes with the name Covell Village, and hired Mike Corbett as their designer. It gave Corbett a chance to rejuvenate his reputation. But like South Davis which Corbett had too much to say about as a council member in the 1987 planning process, the scale of Covell Village was too big for Corbett’s cul-de-sac ideas (it is Judy who has the broader neighborhood vision), and the Partners weren’t really committed to anything in particular beyond developing the land to make them even richer. So any time somebody threw out an idea during the approval process, the Partners were willing to change the core, so it never had a firm design foundation.
- Mike Corbett as the principal promoter of the project: instead of hiring a profession public relations firm/individual, the Partners decided to make “former Mayor” Corbett the personification of the project at all the meetings, basically forcing people to accept the project, implying no one would complain about a bigger, updated version of Village Homes. The problem was that Corbett still hadn’t recovered from the humiliation of losing his bid for re-election to the city council. So when he was supposed to be promoting Measure X, he was really asking strangers to finally accept him as a friend, and reward him by supporting his project.
- Traffic at Pole Line Road and Covell Boulevard: of all the technical problems with any development at the Covell Village site, the biggest one is the increased impact of any project on local car and truck traffic. Pole Line Road is now the direct route to the Costco shopping center in eastern Woodland, and traffic east-west as well as north-south is near carrying capacity, and will only get worse.
- The Partners’ age: The Partners are getting old enough that they wanted the city to approve the entire project right away. They demanded of the city council (which they CONTROLLED 4 to 1) that it be the exclusive housing development for the entire city for the next seven years. The sense of urgency on top of entitlement was a different form of greed.
As the council drama played out during the months before the Measure X vote, City Manager Jim Antonen seemed out of touch, more of a caretaker than a manager. Then-Planning Director Bill Emlen was the main person standing up for the city’s interests, and the partners were so blatant in their manipulation of “their” four votes on the city council that they gave opponent Sue Greenwald credibility, encouraging her to be even more hostile and negative.
It is difficult to imagine circumstances in which the voters of Davis would support a project by the Partners. Now they are trying to shape a seniors housing project in hopes that the voters will be sold.
In 2006, Ruth Asmundson ran for re-election, defiantly defending her support for Covell Village. Although she was attacked, she still came in first, and Lamar Heystak won the other seat. The main issue during the campaign was criticism of the Davis Police Department for racial profiling. This was dragged through the mud from February to June by Bill Ritter, campaign manager for Pat Lenzi, a candidate for Yolo County District Attorney. Ritter’s ally, Cecilia Escamelia Greenwald was the leader of the public criticism, using her position as chair of the city Human Relations Commission. It was always hard to tell if the issue was more important, or Cecilia was mostly focused on promoting herself.
Lamar’s campaign was distinguished by his spending his own $30,000 and raising relatively little in community support. His campaign manager, Davis High School social studies teacher Don Winters, gave members of his volunteer ACLU club extra class credit for calling their friends and reminding them to tell their voting parents that the city shouldn’t continue the racist policies of the police department, so don’t vote for the incumbent, Filipina Ruth, and vote for Lamar. Bill Ritter’s racist, anti-law enforcement campaign was effective in Davis, where Pat Lenzi gained a majority, but she lost countywide to Jeff Reisig.
Sue Greenwald’s term as mayor was defined by the grief and hostility she gave to her colleagues on the council and city staff. She was perpetually concerned about receiving the proper respect worthy of the mayor, when it is earned not given. Aside from the voter’s approval of the Target shopping center over Greenwald’s opposition, the council accomplished very little during her term. She harps on turning the PG&E corporation yard into condominiums, but fails to add that the city would have to come up with $70 million to buy the property from PG&E, so that the company can move their equipment and services. It would be like the city taking over a quarter of the UCD campus. Most of her ideas are not practical, and it is rare that she gets a second for most of her motions.
Greenwald claims whatever she happens to be saying is “progressive” and the city should do whatever she happens to be saying at the moment. To a certain extent, so does Lamar. It reflects the self-identity of many of the people who voted for them, but it really doesn’t have any substance beyond opposing growth or even change.
The 2008 city council race was pretty much a repeat of the incumbents, with the order this time being Don Saylor, Stephen Souza and Sue Greenwald. Sue was relieved to come in third, and retain her seat on the council, with no obligation to get along with the rest of the council. Cecilia Escamelia Greenwald caused Sue a lot of grief because her married name is the same (see Those Campaigning Greenwald Sisters). Cecilia may be the least humble person in Davis. New comer Sydney Vergis came in a surprising fourth.
For 2010, with Ruth and Lamar’s seats up, Cecilia is confident about running again without interference from Sue (and presumed support although they don’t get along at all). Also already running are Lamar and Sydney. Ruth is undecided. Measure J has a sunset, so it is up for renewal, diluting or strengthening, and the General Plan housing element needs to be updated and submitted to the state. With the national housing economy in the doldrums, growth may not be the only issue out there. City financing for the water treatment upgrade required by the federal Clean Water Act, gaining access to ground water, building another fire station, paying for the employee pension fund, and maintaining the level of tax revenue with a fragile local business climate are all on the table.
