 It's A-N instead of O-N. I'm sorry, Dylan. Very good. Nice. Mary Jo, you can start. Thank you. Welcome to the League of Women Voters, Davis City Council District 2 Candidates Forum. Thanks to all the candidates for participating in our forum. This forum is also sponsored by the Davis Media Access. Davis Media Access is the non-profit community media center serving Yolo County. Davis Media Access mission is to enrich and strengthen the community by providing alternatives to community and commercial media for local voices, opinions, and creative endeavors. My name is Mary Jo Bryan. I'm the current president of the League of Women Voters of Davis. As many of you know, both the city of Davis and the Davis Joint Unified School District have moved from at-large elections where we all vote for city council or for school trustees to district elections where we vote for a candidate who lives in the district where we live. The city of Davis map, which I'm showing on the screen, shows City Council District 2. The district includes parts of North and Central Davis with boundaries on the west of 113, the south of Russell Boulevard, and on the east by Oak Avenue and Carolina. Our moderator for today's forum is Donna Neville. Donna is active in Davis as the vice chair of the city finance and budget commission and as the chair of the Davis Joint Unified School District measure M, Citizens Bond Oversight Committee. Donna retired a few years ago after serving as a chief council for the California state auditors. Thank you, welcome, and onward Donna, thank you. Good afternoon. My name is, good afternoon everyone and welcome. My name is Donna Neville and I will serve as the moderator for this afternoon's District 2 forum. Here's a quick rundown of the rules that we're gonna be following in the format we'll be using. Each candidate will give a two-minute opening statement. After opening statements, candidates will respond to up to six moderated questions. Three of these questions were provided to you a week ago. Each candidate will have 90 seconds for the initial response to each question. You'll be advised of your time by the timekeeper with a 15 second and a five second warning and a bell will chime when your time is up and then you will be muted if you exceed the time limit. Also, we're just a reminder of candidates, please mute your audio when you're not speaking and responding to a question. The league has determined the order of candidates by random number drawing. Prior to this afternoon, candidates have been advised of their order of speaking. We're initially going to begin with Dylan Horton followed by Will Arnold and then Colin Walsh and we'll move through the rotation as we go. After the primary question responses are completed by all the candidates, I will ask if any candidate wants to add a secondary response. Candidates will have each have five opportunities during the forum for a secondary response of 40 seconds each. If there are no additional candidate responses to a particular question, I will go on to the next question. To indicate that you would like to make a secondary response to a question, please use the raise hands feature of Zoom. You find that under the participants button, click on that and just go to your name or at the lower right corner, just hit raise hand. I will do my best to call on you and respond to you in the order in which you hit that button, I'll do my best to make sure I recognize you in order. At the conclusion of the moderated questions and responses, each candidate will have one minute for a closing statement. And for those of you watching, just note that we will disable chat at the beginning of the main part of this forum and we'll enable it when the main forum is concluded. So we would like you to submit questions and we welcome them, but in order to submit questions, you should submit them via email. And I think Kamel's gonna show that email again on the screen, but it's ask, it's ask.lwvdaatgmail.com. And I'm gonna repeat that again and I'll repeat it again later in the forum. You see it now on the screen, it's ask.lwvdaatgmail.com. Please submit questions that are general and can be addressed to all candidates. Questions that are addressed to a single candidate won't be used. After the main part of the forum, we're gonna take a short break so that our question manager can collate the questions and get them back to me. And during that short break, Mary Jo Bryan will give you a little more information about the League of Women Voters. And I'm gonna give you a little bit of a quick break about the League of Women Voters. We'll close with the audience questions. That'll take about a half an hour. And during that time, candidates will have one minute to respond to audience questions with the opportunity for a secondary response of 30 seconds. So right now we're gonna turn to opening statements of two minutes each from the candidates and we're going to begin with Dylan Horton. Thank you Dylan, please go ahead. Thank you, good afternoon everyone. I'm really glad to be with you all and take part in this conversation about the future of our community. As far as my day job, I work for a local nonprofit doing employment support for people with developmental disabilities. As far as my role in the city, I'm currently the chair of the Davis Police Accountability Commission and have been on that commission for the past two years. I decided to run for Davis City Council at the beginning of last year because I believe we need, from the top to the bottom of our government, more elected leaders who live closer to the crises affecting many working-class Davisites and residents across our community on a daily basis. The crisis, our housing crisis, excuse me, the crisis of our economic downturn and the lack of jobs and opportunity in our communities. And of course, the challenges and continuing crisis that institutions perpetuate in racism in our community, particularly law enforcement in this current time. I'm running to bring that perspective, I think of people who haven't been in the elected offices in Davis for many years now. And I think we can do better to readily address these issues of the housing crisis, of economic development, of reforming our local law enforcement system so that it can be more inclusive and they can provide a sense of security and safety to everyone in our community. I'm looking forward to the rest of our conversation today, but if folks are looking to hear more information about me and to find more about my background and my priority focuses, they can take a look at dylan4davis.com. And I know my first name is spelled kind of funny. It's D-I-L-L-A-N, the number four, davis.com. And I look forward to the rest of the conversation. Thank you. Thank you, Dylan. And now we're gonna move to Will Arnold for his opening statement. Well, thank you. I'd like to thank the league, not only for today, but for everything you do, largely unsung. Now more than ever, your commitment to protecting our democracy is truly vital. I also wanna give a huge shout out to all our statewide firefighters as well as our own Davis firefighters who've joined the statewide effort to keep us safe here at home. And thank you to everyone joining us here today, your participation gets to the heart of who we are. As a community, we've always sought to shape our policies by the values we share. We have faced adversity before and done so with perseverance, resilience and innovation and used challenges to learn and adapt. And although most of what's happening in our country, we could never have imagined before, now is no different. I look forward to digging into our local issues today, but I wanted to share a few thoughts to start out. It would be easy to be fatigued, dispirited and cynical about things right now. Let's face it, things are truly difficult, but there's also a spirit of resistance and resilience that gives me hope because I know we're not defined by our challenges, but by how we overcome them. Addressing systemic racial injustice is needed to happen for a long time, but as a society, this feels like the first time we've talked this openly, broadly and honestly. And as a father of mixed race children, I'm encouraged and I look forward to continuing to push this conversation locally. Climate change has been a critical issue addressed by our community for decades, but it feels like it's finally coming out of the shadows and is on the table for all to see. And finally, our national political scene is a mess and it's hard not to be consumed by it, but I would urge everyone to vote from president all the way down the ballot. Local policy is where we have the greatest personal impact and it's where we have a chance to push back and hold the line. We need experienced leadership that can effectively advocate for our values. Thank you for being here and I look forward to this conversation. Thank you, Will. And now we're gonna move on to Colin Walsh. Colin, please go ahead with your opening statement. Good afternoon. Thank you to the League of Women Voters, Davis area for this opportunity today. I have to say I'm so glad that League is back and I know that that's taken an enormous effort from everyone involved and I appreciate all of you for doing it. It is so important for our local democracy here. Last Friday, a week ago this Friday, I guess I went in for a routine gallbladder surgery, but unfortunately a complication sent me into an emergency second surgery and I only just returned home yesterday morning. I'm thankful to be home with my family after a week at the Sutter Hospital, but please excuse me today if I seem a little less energetic. I'm just so grateful to be here after this unexpected turn. I'm Colin Walsh, I grew up here in Davis. I have two kids in the local schools. I take care of my 82 year old mother and I've been involved in the city for many years in many different ways and I would just be thrilled to have the opportunity to represent district two as a city council person. And so I hope today to give you some good reasons to vote for me, thank you. Thank you, Colin. So now we're gonna turn to our moderated questions and the order of responses this time will begin with Will Arnold followed by Colin Walsh and then Dylan Horton. The question is, although the city council will continue to govern all of Davis, if elected you will serve the voters of a specific district. What are the top needs or issues of your district and how do you propose to address them? Well, that's a great question. It's one that comes up as I talk to voters in the district as we all know this is the first time the city of Davis has done district elections, both our school board and our city will be elected not citywide as we have done for decades, but by district and while you are exactly correct that if elected no matter where someone is elected from they'll be making decisions that not only affect the entire city but could be in the heart of a different district and that's important to recognize. You know, I was elected four years ago citywide in the penultimate citywide city of Davis council election and I had broad support from throughout the city and I still am very pleased to have support of my entire city council colleagues and many folks throughout the district. And so I will certainly be governing should I be fortunate enough to earn a second term be governing with an eye on this entire city that I was born and raised in and that I love. Although Davis is not as split up as many other cities in terms of need, there are some needs that folks in our district have recognized homeless camps that are around our district that's one of them. Maybe I'll use my opportunity to talk some more about the district needs. Thank you. Thank you, Will. Now we're gonna turn to Colin Walsh to answer that question. Thank you. In listening to community members during my grassroots campaign, the issues I'm hearing most frequently are a concern for the economic viability of our downtown and concern for our stores, the impacts of people camping in our neighborhoods and residential property crime. Those are definitely three repeated themes. I'm also talking to voters throughout the town and what I'm hearing from voters throughout the city is concern for the city's financial health and a desire for transparent and accessible government process. And I'm hearing that from across the city really. Thank you. Thank you, Colin. And now we go to Dylan Horton. Please go ahead, Dylan. Thank you. I believe that it's really important for council members elected after this election to really see the entire city as something that they are responsible for and making policy for. I think there's no situation, even if something is entirely located outside of the district one is representing or one was elected to, there's no lower degree of responsibility that you have as a council member to make good policy for the entirety of the city and for the city's future. I do think that there are gonna be some cases where something is going on squarely within the boundaries of the district. And I think it's appropriate for that council member elected from that district to give maybe some increased special attention to that particular issue. But I don't believe that there's any issue in Davis regardless of where it's located in town that would warrant less attention from a city council member just because of the districts. I think we serve the entire city, we make policy for the entire city and that's how council members should organize their thoughts and actions. Thank you, Dylan. Does anyone wish to make a secondary response? I'm not seeing any raised hands. I wanna be sure. Okay, then I'm gonna move on to the next question. The next question is what is your position on reallocating public safety and police funding in Davis? And please include specific examples. And this time our order of response will be Colin Walsh, Dylan Horton, solid by Will Arnold. So please go ahead Colin. Thank you. I believe this is a discussion that we should be having. It's a discussion that needs to involve our police department, our community members. It needs to involve our commissions. It's something that really the time has come to talk about it in some deeper ways. There are some positive examples out there. In Eugene, Oregon, the Kahootz program has been operating since 1989 and seems to be having really good outcomes with vans of medical and professional service folks that are diverting things from police interaction. I would love to see something like that explored either at a Davis level or possibly at a county shared services level. And these are the kind of things that we need to talk about, but it's a conversation that needs to happen as a community. Well, I appreciate the ideas that other council candidates have put forward. I view this as the type of thing that is not for one person to lay out just how to do alone, that this is something that we as a whole community with all of our great expertise and the participation of the police department itself especially need to be involved in deciding how to go forward. Thank you. Thank you, Colin. And now we go to Dylan Horton. Thank you. I think this is a conversation that we've been having in a number of different ways in communities across the country. You can see pieces of this in John Lewis's speech as a much younger man at the march on Washington a number of decades ago. These conversations about the inefficiency and poor results in using armed law enforcement to respond to mental health crises, to respond to situations where individuals are undergoing some degree of a drug use issue where people need help and outreach in terms of being homeless where people are just trying to get down their street safely separating those things from armed law enforcement from being delivered at the end of armed law enforcement and separating the habitation of those services and the funding of those services from the administration of the police department is what I'm concentrating on in the Davis Police Accountability Commission and in this joint subcommittee process that's been going on for the past couple of months. It's really drawing from the experience of communities who've been in the streets sort of fighting for enhanced accountability and reform for many decades. And I think that's the direction that we need to go in and I'll just say it's been a number of forums where at least my opponent that spoke previously is sort of advocated for increasing the size of the police department's budget for increasing sort of armed law enforcement. I don't think that's the direction that our community should go in. Thank you, Dylan. And now we're gonna go to Will Arnold for his response. Thank you. So as a city council, in my first term we've made several progressive police reforms including the creation of the citizen led police accountability commission and enhancement of the city's independent police auditor position. We've developed an alternate dispute resolution process using restorative justice practices as an option for folks who have had negative police interactions. We've also recently enacted a forward-looking surveillance technology ordinance that was based on ACLU model language. We've instituted body-worn cameras, video release policies, mandatory training for officers and things like guardian mindset, de-escalation, crisis intervention, racial profiling and implicit bias training. But specific to this question we've also taken important steps in my first term in strategically reinvesting the police department budget. The last three positions we've added to the department are homelessness outreach coordinator, a police services specialist to provide further support for homelessness outreach and our only position added to the entire city staff in our 2020-2021 budget was for mental health crisis intervention services in conjunction with Yolo County HHSA to respond to calls about folks experiencing a mental health episode. These are concrete actions that we've taken in my first term on the council to do exactly what the question asks. Thank you. Thank you, Will. And I do see that Dylan, you have your hand raised to give a secondary response and Will, you'll have a second opportunity right after Dylan to respond secondarily as well. Thank you. I think this is truly a question of leadership to a certain degree by my observation, a number of the items that council member Arnold has routinely sort of bragged about as police reform efforts that he's been involved in over the past couple of years have been sort of efforts pushed on the city by community advocates or pushed through the city council by other city council members. So I guess my more direct question would be if the council member could respond to it, which specific police reform efforts has he been directly involved in? Which reforms can we attribute directly to his specific leadership? Well, I appreciate that question from Dylan and he's describing exactly how effective policymaking happens. You take input from community members and stakeholders, you engage stakeholders and you craft policy and then you support it with your vote. And I'm very proud of my involvement in that process, including bringing stakeholders who initially were not excited about the idea of a police accountability commission, for example, not in favor of things like this surveillance technology ordinance, engaging stakeholders, bringing them along, crafting effective policy. That's exactly the leadership position I've taken and that's exactly how it ought to work. Thank you, Will. And I'm not seeing any other raised hand. So I'm going to move on to Dylan. Did you raise your hand for another secondary? No, thank you. I'm going to move on to the third question. What more can the city do to curtail climate change? And this time the order of responses is Dylan Horton, Will Arnold and Colin Walsh. So please go ahead, Dylan. So what I think the, well, what I've at least focused on is a whole lot that the city can do to combat climate change. But just a little bit that I've tried to focus on is trying to make sure that the city is doing its part in contributing to a more sustainable climate here in the city. The city committed to a number of steps in the 2010 climate, the cap in 2010 in regard to the use of recycled materials and in regard to its use of a green fleet. I think it's really time in the sort of upgraded decade later cap that we increase all of those to the degree possible that we sort of use 100% recycled materials to the degree possible that we expand our vehicles to be more sustainable to our operations. But I think we also should look at how we're designing our services in the city so that people are coming to city hall less to get services. I think we've seen a lot of sort of innovations that we didn't think were possible in this COVID-19 era where we've had to, for health reasons, keep people away from city hall. I think we can redesign some of these services to make sure that they're being delivered to people and people are engaging with them in a more sustainable fashion. Great. Thank you, Dylan. And now we're gonna move to Will Arnold. Well, thank you for that question. It is critical. This is the question of our times. The city council has declared a climate emergency and have been pursuing environmental sustainability. It's an identified major goal of mine and of my council colleagues. This includes reducing our carbon footprint and achieving measurable GHG emissions, implementing the community's climate action and adaptation plan as well as coordinating with organizations to promote sustainable programs and projects such as the Valley Climate Action Center, Cool Davis, UC Davis. We're also currently updating our CAP plan to incorporate climate resiliency and incorporating climate resiliency across all council actions. I would say one of the most important actions we've taken in my council term of any action we've taken is creation of the Valley Clean Energy Alliance, which is a locally governed energy provider and supporting its effort to deliver clean energy options to utility customers. We're also exploring implementation of programs to assist property owners in understanding the energy conservation opportunities for their properties and facilitating expansion of residential and commercial solar and renewable energy generation in the city of Davis. I'm also proud of the work we've done on electric vehicle charging infrastructure and the Electrify YOLO project, as well as our new non-residential reach codes. Great, thank you, Will. And Colin Walsh, it's your turn, but just for the benefit of those listening, I'm gonna repeat the question because we're doing great on time and I wanna be sure everyone knows what the question at hand is. The question is, what more can the city do to curtail climate change? So please go ahead, thank you. Thank you so much. This is a difficult question because the reality is climate change is a global phenomenon. And so anything the city does has to be understood in this larger context. Yet the city can and must do everything in its power to do our part, to be part of the solution and to be part of an example of what the solution can be. I'm endorsed by the Sierra Club because of my strong environmental background and environmental policies. One of the things that our citizens can do is we can vote against Measure B. This new business park on the periphery of Davis adds the 8% to the carbon footprint of our city. It's the single greatest environmental change that the city wants to make and we're going in the wrong direction. We haven't made plans for how 6,000 workers will get to and from their jobs every day. There's an expected 24,000 additional cars on Mace Boulevard. We just have to do better than that and we have to come up with better ways to develop and better ways for economic growth. The answer can't always be, well, the climate's just gonna take another hit. Thank you so much. Thank you, Colin. And I see, Will, you have your hand up first. Secondary response, please go ahead. Yeah, I talked to my response about things that we have done in my first term. I wanna talk about some things going forward. Just this week, we'll be moving forward with a study of our fuel facility needs and that includes beginning the process of moving our fleet to hybrids and plug-ins and electric vehicles. And I'm on the record as favoring that transition as soon as possible. We're working with the state to improve mobility and modality along I-80. And today it's 90 degrees in October with smoke-filled air. So I believe our efforts must include bracing for the impacts of climate change that are here now and ensuring that the most vulnerable among us are protected. And I'm proud of what we've done as a council, including other respite center and other things to protect those in need. Thank you, Will. We're about midway through. Dylan, did you have your hand up? No, thank you. We're about midway through our questions and I just wanna repeat the email address one more time for those who may be watching or listening in case you want to submit questions. We will be taking questions up until 2 p.m. And the email address that you should use is askask.LWVDA at gmail.com. That's ask.LWVDA at gmail.com. Please submit your questions, make them applicable to all of the members, all the candidates and we'll be answering questions between two and two 30 today. So I'm now gonna move on to the fourth question. The recently developed downtown plan will affect all residents of the city and the new council will be responsible for its implementation. What is your understanding of the status of the downtown plan and what are your top priorities for implementing it? And the order of response this time is Will Arnold, Colin Walsh, followed by Dylan Horton. So please go ahead, Will. Will, you're muted. Sorry, it said the host muted me, that's okay. So currently city staff and our consultants are working on the environmental review process and addressing public input as well as finalizing the water assessment and traffic study. The draft EIR is expected to be completed and ready for public review in February of next year. The first part of that process is the notice of preparation which will begin this week kicking off a 30 day public review period to assist in developing the scope of the EIR analysis. There's also several public meetings scheduled including a public scoping meeting on October 29th and two planning commission workshops scheduled for I believe this month and next. After the EIR process is concluded in the spring and the final EIR is published, it'll be ready for planning commission and council action by early next summer. In addition to being a key part of our updated general plan process, I see major advantages of the downtown plan as finding space in town for increased densification and increased building height as well as mixed use capability so we can get folks living, working, shopping and recreating in one place and all of the benefits that come with that. In addition, form-based codes are more resilient, flexible allowing for predictability and future development, helping businesses and encouraging walkability and livability. It's my hope that the downtown plan will serve as a catalyst for development and investment in our community and in our infrastructure specifically in the downtown. Great, thank you, Will. And next up is Colin Walsh and please Colin, let me know if you'd like me to repeat the question because I know these questions weren't provided to you ahead of the forum. Yes, if you could, that would be helpful. Sure, happy to do that. The recently developed downtown plan will affect all residents of Davis and the new council will be responsible for its implementation. What is your understanding of the status of the downtown plan and what are your top priorities for implementing it? Thank you so much. Well, my understanding is that the downtown plan is entering into the SQL review process. But after talking with some members of the people who are on the committee to work on the downtown plan that there seems to be a lot of questions still as to just what is going into SQL review. So I have some real questions about transparency of process and community involvement in the plan. And this is a major question for Davis is what do we want our downtown to look like and what are the charms and qualities of the Davis that we have that we need to keep going forward and how can we do this in a way that's sustainable and resilient? And it seems that there are still quite a few questions that need to be addressed and answered. My concern for the downtown plan is without more transparency and process that it's a process that could lead to conflict. And I would like to see processes done in such a way where there's ample significant community involvement and council involvement as well. So on the council, I will be looking to make sure that we have as much community involvement in the process as possible. Thank you. Thank you, Colin and Dylan, please go ahead and I'm happy to repeat the question if you'd like. No, it's fine, thank you. So the first thing I was gonna say is I think this is a kind of a good model of public engagement. That's why I was kind of frowning at some of the last couple of comments. But I think, I also have heard from just people in general about the need to make sure that the sort of public policy development processes that the city goes through be more open and accessible, particularly to public input, to the many people who have a lot of free time, a lot of expertise and issues relevant to the work of the city. I think it's really important that it's so much of the plan focuses on making obviously downtown a more vibrant economic center for the community, but also making it a more accessible center for the community. I held a number of roundtables before I started the campaign and one of them was on senior issues. Actually, one of our hosts here was a participant in that roundtable, but a lot of our conversation in that roundtable focused on transportation access to downtown. I was a little surprised. And so I think number one, we have to be sure that people can access downtown and get there and get out and be able to participate in what's going on there. If you don't have easy access to downtown, you have a real serious limitation to your participation in the Davis experience. So making sure that it is a place where we can have more mixed use, we can have more accessibility, I think is all something that we should support. Thank you, Dylan. I am not currently seeing any raised hands for secondary responses. I did see one before, but not raised now. Does anyone wanna make a secondary? No, that was a misclick by me, sorry. No worries, just checking. Excellent. So we're gonna move on to the fifth question. The city faced, and I should explain that the order of response here will be Colin Walsh, Dylan Horton, followed by Will Arnold. The question is, the city faced financial problems before COVID-19. How can it dig out of an even deeper financial hole now? And Colin Walsh, please go ahead. Thank you. Well, I commend the city for taking some necessary action to respond to the projected 20 million loss to the city revenue with productions to programs, projects and furloughs and city staff. We'll need to monitor this very closely and be proactive to assure a positive physical health for our city. Talking with local business owners and our community and hearing such concern for the downtown, I do think that even while we are cutting and making these difficult choices and believe me, there are going to be difficult choices, we also have to be ready to make investments in key places to make sure that things like our local businesses survive and can thrive coming out of this. So that's my perspective on the economics for our city. It's gonna be a tough, there's gonna be a real tough challenge. Thank you, Colin. And please go ahead, Dylan. Thank you. Similarly, I support some of the actions that the city took earlier this summer to sort of push back a number of infrastructure projects and to push back a number of the hireings for city positions that would have increased sort of financial mandate of the city in a time where we definitely didn't need something like that. I think similarly ongoing, we're gonna if the crisis from a healthcare perspective continues to be as it has been for the past couple of months, we can assume that the economic area of the crisis is gonna continue. And I think the city should be prepared to take some further actions like that to further push back. All of our things that the city is funding now are needed but we're pushing back needed infrastructure projects. We might be further pushing back staff hires. I do think that the city council members at the very least should outline some principles and areas that they're not willing to go. And at least for me, that means, the cuts to our most critical services and the sort of most bedrock promises that we've made to our staff who stood by us in public service throughout all of this crisis. That's definitely things like retiree medical. So I think cuts to our most critical staff and our most critical services, excuse me, and staff benefits, I think are lines that I wouldn't want to cross as a council member. Thank you, Dylan. Please go ahead, Will Arnold. Thank you. So this is something I'm very proud of in my first term on the council. Our budget is more secure now, even despite the current economic challenges that we're facing. When we faced the great recession about a decade ago, we made some deep cuts to our city budget, including reducing the number of folks we have on staff. And those were very difficult cuts that were made. But since then, in the good times, many of our other neighboring jurisdictions hired like crazy, and the city intentionally was very prudent about hiring. And we've only been hiring one position a year, the only exception being firefighters that we hired that actually ended up saving the city money because it reduced the overtime burden to the city. And that's something that I think we should all be very proud of our city. We also worried as a result, we were able to face this current economic crisis without having to resort to any layoffs. We were able to achieve some of the budget reductions that were necessary through agreed upon furloughs with our bargaining units, which is not all cities were able to say that and some had to go the route of layoffs. And so I'm so glad that the work we've done ahead of time to be a prudent in our budget has allowed us to forestall some of those major deep cuts. And I just raised my hand so I can continue if I may. I was told that was an option. So I would say that of course, I'm somebody who believes in upholding and standing by our commitments. So that is something that is off the table. Some commitments we've made to our employee groups are off the table. And if we're gonna touch those in any way, it's gotta be through mutual agreement with our employee groups. And I would just say quickly with regard to the business community, you know, this Healthy Davis Together initiative with UC Davis, a big part of it is to help support our local businesses in this tough time. We've also instituted Open Air Davis, which is these weekend street closures, as well as other strategies to help our downtown businesses in this incredibly tough time. Thank you. Thank you, Will. And I'm not seeing any other secondary responses. No raised hands here. So I'm gonna move on to our sixth and final question. And the order of responses for this one will be Dylan Horton, Will Arnold, followed by Colin Walsh. The sixth question is, what can Davis learn from other California cities that have high housing costs, low housing availability, and limited affordable housing, such as a Rinda, Palo Alto, Santa Barbara, et cetera? So please go ahead, Dylan. Dylan, I think you're muted still. There we go, thank you. So we're all as communities, particularly across California, going through this together, unfortunately. And so I don't think that there's a whole lot more as far as innovative practices that we can borrow from other communities. But what I do think we can learn something from is what's working long term, what's been able to, what people have tried and hasn't been successful in other communities. And we can learn a little bit from that. And I think that's why we need to expand the stock of affordable housing in this community, sort of definitely sort of capital A affordable housing, but also below market rate housing, because that tends to be a particular barrier in other communities that have similar characteristics to Davis in California. And but it's also just anecdotally and in the experience of people here and Davis a big barrier. And I think we were one of the final communities, college communities to pass a renters rights ordinance and to develop a renters resources program. And I think further investments into that, I know this is a difficult thing in an economic crisis, but the city, I believe hired sort of one part-time staffer to be able to lift up and make that program work as best as it possibly could. And so if we can give the full staffing resources to that program and resources sort of backed up by other offices in the city, I think we can go a long way to improving lease practices and quality and housing in Davis. Thank you, Dylan. And now we're gonna move to Will Arnold. Thank you. This is an important question. When I was running for election in 2016, I was asked at the time, what the biggest issues were that we were facing as a community and the housing crisis was always at the top of that list. We hadn't approved any market rate rental housing in several years prior to my election. And the vacancy rate in town was 0.2%, which is effectively zero. We as a council have taken the housing crisis head on since I was elected. We've approved several projects, particularly multi-family housing. Also prior to my election, no projects had passed the voters that were subject to Measure J. And since my election, we've brought the community along to approve the first two Measure J projects in city history, both were housing projects. All of these projects were controversial with significant opposition, both political and via lawsuit, including folks suing to overturn the will of the voters. But I said I was gonna do something about the housing crisis and I have done so repeatedly. Thank you, Will. And finally, Colin Walsh, please go ahead. Colin? Yeah, I'm just unmuting. Very good. Well, this is a really important question. And I gotta say I've really been following closest Culver City in Southern California where my friend Megan Sally-Walsh just finished her second term as mayor. They have the same housing problems we do, but with huge Silicon Valley-type impacts as Amazon has opened new studios in their town. And the gentrification has just gone through the roof. And what I really see from talking with her and watching down there is that developer-driven projects alone will not bring affordability to housing. That there has to be very, because the demand for housing is so elastic that you can build and build and build and the prices will stay high. There has to be very specific thought on the part of our council to how to bring affordable housing and we need to redo our affordable housing policy with that in mind as soon as possible so that we have the best possible affordable housing for our city. Thank you. Great. Thank you, Colin. That concludes our six moderated questions. And now each candidate is going to have time for a closing statement of one minute. And the order here is going to be Will Arnold, Colin Walsh, followed by Dylan Horton. So please go ahead, Will. Well, again, thank you to the league for hosting and to everyone who joined us today. I'm proud to be a part of a city council that is so collaboratively focused on the good of our residents, especially now. We don't always agree, but we listen, learn, and at the end of the day, we put what's best for Davis families first and foremost. That's why I'm especially honored to have the trust, respect, and support of every one of my Davis City Council colleagues. Things are so tough right now and likely will be for a while. The choices we make have very real impacts on the people we serve and with policy, the devil's in the details. So having council members that understand, have experience, and know how to get things done is critical. We also have a tremendous opportunity and I continue to have hope. I'll remain a steady collaborative voice and will continue to lead with passion, dedication, and love. It's an honor to serve and I hope that I can earn your vote and the continuing opportunity for us to work together. Thank you, Will. Please go ahead, Colin Walsh, and make your closing statement. Oh, Colin, you're muted. Thank you again to the League of Women Voters for the Davis area, for organizing the forum. I know it takes a lot of work. I care deeply about my community, about our community, and I have for years. If elected to city council, I'll work closely with my colleagues to improve the process for better community involvement and smart planning. I wanna take a moment to thank the five former mayors who've endorsed me, Joe Cravosa, Bill Copper, Mike Corbett, Sue Greenwald, and Ken Wagstaff. But a truly touching endorsement to me is from Lydia Baskin, my second grade teacher. That really means a lot. I'd like to invite community members to contact me through my website at www.Walsh, the number four, davis.com. Thank you so much. Thank you, Colin. And Dylan, please go ahead with your closing statement. Thank you. And thank you to the League for putting together this forum and for the service that y'all have provided and informing voters all of these past years with a little bit of a gap. I am running for Davis City Council because I believe we can provide a really tremendous opportunity to our community. We already have provided a tremendous opportunity to our community to change the course of our future, to design a community that is inclusive and is accessible. Since we're talking about endorsements, I'm glad to have the support of former assembly member, Mariko Yamada, former school board president, Cindy Pickett, and our current mayor, Gloria Partita. If you wanna find out more about my campaign, you can visit DylanforDavis.com. I spelled it again and I'll spell it now. That's D-I-L-L-A-N, the number four, davis.com. Thank you all. Thank you, Dylan, and thank you, candidates. So it is now just about 1.50 and we're gonna have a brief interlude while we assemble and collate the questions that have been coming in. And during this time, you're gonna hear a message from the League president, Mary Jo Bryant. She's gonna provide a little more information about the League. But those who are here listening and watching, please stay tuned. We will be coming back on. We'll be here, but we'll be coming live again after two o'clock with questions and answers from the candidates. So if you still have a few more questions you wanna submit, again, the email is askask.lwvda.gmail.com. And we'll be accepting those till just about two o'clock and we're working hard to collate them and come back to you. But I'm gonna turn it back over to Mary Jo for some more information about the League. Thank you. Thank you very much. Am I on? Can you hear me? Good, okay. This is what an opportunity. I'm proud to be able to talk a little bit about the League and the history of the League. The League of Women Voters of Davis and I'm not sure how many you know was born actually in 1957 under the leadership of a future mayor, Sandy Motley. It grew into a vibrant, non-partisan organization and thrived for many years doing community service for Davis. After years of that dedicated service to the Davis community and the leadership faced the reality of diminishing active members and the lack of younger members to take over the leadership and the League disbanded itself in 2014 and 15 there. However, given the political climate of the time in May of 2019, a group of four individuals, Bob Fung, myself, Mary Jo, Georgina Valencia and Matt Williams met over coffee to discuss how to recreate, reestablish the League in Davis. This initial group of four, we researched the organization of the First League and its history and follow the steps established by the State League to renew the League and the State League on August 4th, 2019 announced the Davis chapter officially, officially a chapter in progress. Our current board members include myself, Mary Jo, Brian as president, Bob Fung as vice president and voter service chair, Judy Harrison as membership chair and voter registration chair and Como Hawk as social media and marketing chair. The healthcare committee is chaired by Michelle Famula. Along with the five of us, we are grateful for all the members who are actively working to provide nonpartisan community forums, voter education material and get out the vote in the upcoming November 3rd election. Highlights of our first year included forums on the Davis general plan, housing discrimination and affordable housing, two healthcare forums and our local candidates forum for county supervisor, city council, school board and our voter registration where the League members helped 1300 UC Davis students register to vote for the 2020 primary election on March 3rd. Currently, we have close to 130 members including six men and 24 household members which committed to providing nonpartisan community education. And I just wanna briefly say that we are now working with the elections department regarding assisting with get out the vote. And we've distributed about 3000 flyers, Spanish and in English to various community organizations who distributed them through the Food Bank and through Meals on Wheels and through the library of the flyer and League members will be again assisting on November 3rd with the election. I invite all women and men to consider membership in or a donation to the League of Women Voters of Davis area. Our education fund is 501c3 and supports activities like the one you are attending today. We appreciate your participation and invite you to check us out on our website at www.thelwvdavisarea.org That's lwvdavisarea.org. We are stronger together and together we make democracy work. If I still have a little bit more time and I think I do, I'm just gonna give you a little bit of history if you can bear with me. In August, this August of 2020, we celebrated the ratification of Women's Suffrage Amendment and the 19th Amendment after more than 70 years of demonstration, lobbying and even being dragged off to jail, women to get got the vote. The Women's Suffrage Movement was the longest campaign in our history and the most organized. On February 14th, 1920 as an outcome of the 50th anniversary of the National American Women Suffrage Association, Kerry Chapman proposed the creation of a League of Women Voters to finish the fight. With the ratification of the 19th Amendment, the National League of Women Voters was formally organized. The League of Women Voters of Davis was born, I said, in 1957. And on June 27th, the League held its first official meeting by the summer of 1958, completed the needed requirements to see the charter and gained regular official status. The League of Women Voters numbered 40 members in their first year and some founding members became trailblazers. For instance, Kathleen Green became our first women to be elected to the Davis City Council in 1958. And Sandy Motley would become our mayor. In the 1960 general plan, our League members served on each of the committees. The League would change the political scene in Davis by developing Davis, a Davis know your voter, know your town, introducing candidates foreign and producing voter information pamphlets for the each election. They became the nonpartisan watchdog on government policy, observing government bodies and commissions for the public interest and for transparency. League members immersed themselves in city planning and observing government bodies such as the City Council, the Board of Supervisors and the School Board. As John Loughlin, author and historian said, they were part of the new and rapidly growing Vanguard in Davis. The women of the 1950s, 60s and 70s threw themselves into this effort with enthusiasm. The League grew to over 11 members and took on local studies, including the study of the city master plan in 1959 and 60. In June of 1960, the President, Virginia Isaacs, presented a seven point consensus to the City Council that included support for a professional planning department. After years of dedicated service, as I've mentioned, the League disbanded in 2014. But my heart goes out to the women that began the League. I fortunately, I joined in 1973 when my family came to Davis. And I worked under such people as Sandy Motley, Peggy Epstein, Donna Lott, Charlotte Stobek, then Musker. And those women provided me with the leadership training and with the spirit to belong to the League ever since then. So I really am proud to be a League member and to see the restart of the League. But I'm also so proud of the men and women who have joined me in doing this work. The tremendous, to put on this candidate's form took a lot of time and effort and we've got some wonderful members that are active in helping to do this. And we really could use some more. And we have a website and we have an email and we've got Twitter and we've got Facebook and we're really trying to reach out to more people and to be able to introduce the League to them and to their younger members and their families. So thank you very much. I'm not sure if you're ready. Are you ready with questions yet? Thank you, Mary Jo. I'm still waiting just a little bit. I think there may be a lot of questions coming in. And so if you have more information you wanna provide that's great. I'm also happy to exercise moderator's prerogative and throw out a couple of questions of my own as we wait or whatever you like. I've said what I have developed. So, and I didn't think I'd ever get through all of that. So I'm very, very thankful I did. But the League has had everything that I said they did back in the 1950s, 60s and 70s we are still doing now. And so we look forward to being able to carry on the tradition of the League of Independent Voters and Davis, so. Thank you. So if you have questions, Donna or whatever. That would be fine. Great, thank you. I'm waiting on questions and I wanna be sure they haven't been, I don't see any they haven't come to me yet and that's just fine. I'm just gonna run through the kind of the rules for the questioning because we have a nice solid half hour for questioning. Each candidate will be limited to a one minute response per question. And you will also have a secondary 30 second response for each candidate for each question. So there's no cap on that. You have one, one secondary response for each question. We're hoping to present you with at least five questions and maybe more. So the beginning for the order of questioning it will begin with Colin Walsh followed by Dylan Horton and Will Arnold. And I'm going to just throw out a couple of my own questions that came up for me as I was listening. And so my first question too is that Sequa, the California Environmental Quality Act is designed to provide significant public participation in the environmental planning processes. So my question to all of you is do you feel that there's something insufficient about the degree of public engagement that Sequa currently calls for? And if so, please tell me how you would enhance the public participation. And the first person who will be responding is Colin Walsh. Thank you. So Sequa has a lot of good public comment opportunities to it and a lot can be done, a lot depends on how it's implemented. You know, there was a whole question around the disk. What type of an update would happen and the different types of updates allow for different levels of input? So within Sequa, there's a lot of input, but there's also values judgments that are being made by consultants' staff about how public input gets made. But probably the biggest single thing is what is the project that's being put into Sequa in the first place? And if there's not good public input into the project before Sequa starts, that's where the biggest problem is. Thank you. Dylan Horton? Yeah, from my estimation and just from my sort of observation of projects going through the pipeline, I don't see there being a problem with the public input allowed and sort of solicited under Sequa. I think I'm straying on maybe agreeing with my previous opponent who just spoke. I think that the issue where we arrive at Davis is how much public input we are allowing sort of from the city side of things as projects move through the process. I think there tends to be a lot of concern at the back end of projects going through the process of residents feeling like they haven't been adequately consulted, feeling like they don't really know what the details of the project are, even for people who are not, people who are well informed and are staying up on what's going on there. And so I think there's something that there's more things that we can do here and the city has already taken a look at that just last year and sort of re-looking its communication plan. Thank you. And Will Arnold? Sure, obviously Sequa is a very robust process for community engagement. It starts with a robust engagement process with regard to the scope, even that you'll be looking at in the Sequa process as well as once that draft EIR is created, there's further opportunities for folks to weigh in on the varying impacts and provide written input that will be a part of the official final document. It is quite a robust process. Folks have used it as a way to slow down a process that if they are predetermined not to like the income, that's not specific to Davis, that happens everywhere. And so I know that our state leaders have been looking at Sequa reform and ways to ensure that we meet, for example, our housing obligations and don't allow folks to use the Sequa process as a de facto block to needed housing, for example. Thank you. And I'm not seeing any raised hands for follow-up on that question. So I'm gonna move into some of the audience submitted questions now and the order of response this time will be Dylan Horton, Will Arnold followed by Colin Walsh. So the first question is the relationship between the city and UCD is critical to the future of Davis. What ideas do you have to improve this relationship? And please go ahead Dylan. So yes, the relationship between the city and the campus is definitely critical to our city's future and its past and its present and every all parts of what goes on here in Davis. And I think as far as improving that relationship we have to be on the same page as far as goals. And I think that's what's been a sore spot in the past couple of years or so in that the incentives and what sort of pressures are on say the chancellor's office are not the same pressures and in fact are often pushing in different directions from the pressures that's on a city management office or the city council. And so we're moving in direction where we're at least somewhat on the same page about the expanding the availability of housing on campus. I think we need to get further on the same page about the affordability of that housing on campus. But I think it's exploring opportunities like that where we can move forward together on shared goals. Great. Great, thank you. And Will Arnold, please go ahead. Thank you. Our relationship with campus is absolutely critical to our community. UC Davis has been around longer than the city of Davis. So in many ways, the campus and the students predate the city. And so I'm very proud of some of the work that we've done to improve that relationship since in my first term on the council I would say this MOU that we reached with the university with regard to housing is very important. It was a landmark thing that put some real teeth behind addressing the campus adequately addressing and frankly living up to its previous commitments to house students on campus. They committed to 100% of the new student enrollment as well as achieving something they have long promised which is 50% of students being housed on campus and then putting some real teeth behind that. Great, thank you Will. Please go ahead, Colin. Colin, you're muted. Thank you. Any good relationship takes nurturing over time. So we have to start upfront with good communication lines and we have to be persistent in maintaining those communications with the campus. I mean, the city of Davis has this enormous institution, one of the largest employers in the whole state of California, just across the street from us. The impacts that the decisions are made at UC Davis have on our town can be tremendous. And so we need to be, we've had lower moments, we've had better moments, we're doing better than we had been but we have to be vigilant and keeping that relationship moving forward and the teeth in making sure that that housing happens, that there's some question there and we really need to make sure that that housing really does happen and at an affordable rate. Thank you. Great, thank you, Colin. And I see Will Arnold that you have your hand up for a secondary response. Please go ahead. Thank you. I'd be remiss in talking about the campus and not mentioning the Healthy Davis Together Initiative. I mean, ensuring the health and safety of our community is absolutely our most important job and we're working in close partnership with the university to help protect all our community members. This includes robust testing, contact tracing and utilizing the experience and resources of the university and the UCD Med Center to assist us during the pandemic and messaging education campaigns to impress the need for responsible behavior. That's a critical partnership that I'm very proud to have been a part of. Thank you, Will. Dylan, I see that you have your hand raised for secondary. Please go ahead. Yes, I need to start exploring this opportunity to add more time to myself. So one thing that I think we need to go forward on and increase partnership with the campus is on economic development. The bread and butter of economic development for any community is trying to draw on or amplify really its pull factors. What reasons do you have to start a small business or a company in town and we need to work better with the campus in creating and developing those opportunities? Great. Great, thank you, Dylan. And I'm not seeing any other raised hands. Great, so I'm gonna go on to the next audience question. These are great questions, so thank you audience members. Scrolling through them, I'm going to... So the next one I'm gonna ask, the order of response will go from Will Arnold to Colin Walsh to Dylan Horton. This question is, what would you say is the best and the worst decision made by the city council in the last four years and how would you improve the decision-making process? So please go ahead, Will Arnold. Let's see, the best decision of the last four years, I'm gonna go with Valley Clean Energy. That's a big, important, long time, a lot of work in it, really progressive. I'll note that the same night that we dealt with that issue, the turkeys was also at issue. And of course, that's the one that all the media, regional media covered, except of course, the Davis Enterprise, they were on top of the real important issues of creating the VCE. And I'm just so proud of that. We've done a lot of great things on housing too, but I would say the one single thing. The worst thing, what was the question? The worst decision that we've made. What is the worst decision? Look, our community has long been advocating that we switch to renewable sources of energy. When we had an opportunity that presented itself, we jumped at that opportunity. It would provide resources for the city. I'll raise my hand and give up my time, but I'll make sure to finish that. Thank you. Great, thank you. Colin, we'll share up next with the same question. I'm happy to repeat it if you like. Sure, would you repeat that? That'd be great. What would you say is the best and worst decision made by the city council in the last four years? How would you improve the decision-making process? Yeah, that's a good question. So while I would have preferred a DMUD solution, I do have to say that Valley Clean Energy is a significant step forward for bringing green energy to our town. As far as the worst decision, rather than picking a single council vote, that as the highlight of what is the worst one decision, I think it's the decision never to take up the process and make sure that our decisions are moving forward in as transparent a way as they can. And the bright night decision is just an example of that process where the city moved to do a 49-year no-pid lease and they were pushed to do it in a rush without going to any commissions. That's a good example of that. Thank you. Thank you, Colin. And Dylan, please go ahead. Yeah, so I'll go ahead and qualify. This is probably not the best and worst decision, but one that I think is on the better end and one that I think is on the worse end. One that I've already mentioned, the creation of the rental resources program and the renters rights ordinance here in Davis, we were one of the last communities, as I mentioned before, to create an ordinance like that and create a platform for increased fairness and quality and housing in Davis. And I think that was really important as to sort of in the worst sort of end of decisions. The city, goodness, I think it was just earlier this year that the months in COVID time all sort of run together, but the city authorized the purchase of another armored rescue vehicle, of an armored vehicle for the police department. And I think just sort of in these times, it just really didn't make any sense. There wasn't really articulated reasons sort of put forward for why it was necessary. And the commission was created, council members, including council member Arnold Bragg about the creation of the commission and then didn't listen to the commission or solicit the input of the commission when that decision was made. Thank you, Dylan. Will Arnold, I see that you have your hand up for a secondary response to that. Well, I think it's important that I mentioned that I believe in police accountability, but I don't believe they ought to be accountable to active shooters. I'm proud that I afforded our police with the tools they need to keep themselves protected rather than having an MRAP roll into town as it had done about a half dozen times before we acquired this bulletproof Amazon van. I will stand with the need to address policing, but that does not mean I am abandoning our police officers. If I believe they ought to be protected in this way and I'm proud of that vote. Thank you, Will. Any other secondary responses to that? I'm not seeing any. Okay, we'll go on to our next question. We touched on this one or some of you have touched on this earlier, but I know it's an important and timely issue. So the next question, and I'll give you the order of response if we can be prepared is Dylan Horton, Will Arnold and Colin Walsh. And it's a two-part question regarding disc or measure B. And the question is, what is your position on measure B? And if it is approved, how will it affect downtown and MACE traffic? So please go ahead Dylan Horton with that. So I think there's two major questions for candidates here. What's sort of your voting decision and sort of what should have gone maybe differently in the process? I plan on voting yes on measure B whenever my ballot comes, I guess in the next 72 hours or so. And I think we as voters have one choice to make to sort of balance a whole lot of decisions. And for me, given I think my concentration on economic development and our need to really expand the opportunities for that and the expansion of affordable housing, it seemed like on balance the best decision to make as a voter. I do think, as I mentioned before, that we need to, as a city, figure out how we can provide more opportunities for public input to residents as projects like this are going forward. And as they are going forward in the future, as different parts of this project are sort of built out in the multi-decade sort of rollout plan. I forget the last part of your question, I apologize. Well, how will it affect traffic in downtown and in the MACE area? Yes, so just consider me raising my hand, just for a little bit of extra time. And then I think those are a little bit hard to picture. I think a lot of folks are concerned about that for reasons that directly go back to recent Davis history and the build out of some other business sort of developments. And I think the city needs to, number one, figure out how we can make sure that public transportation is as accessible to that spot as possible. But if there are sort of trouble spots as it is building out over many decades, the city should work to address that between downtown business owners or business owners across the city and business owners looking to be a part of the project. Thank you. Will Arnold. So look, the disc is the result of a community led process that began decades ago, the latest iteration of that process that led directly to the disc proposal began in 2010 with the Innovation Park Task Force. They identified the need for this type of a project, the benefits of this type of a project, that this will create local jobs, high paying jobs for UCD graduates and others generate more than $5 million annually for the city and $1.3 million annually for the school district. And it's the first project of its kind in the nation to power all its buildings with 100% clean energy. So the idea that if we don't build it here that somehow the folks that are gonna be going to work here will somehow disappear, we know is not true. And so at least here, it'll be 100% green energy buildings. Thank you, Will. And Colin Walsh, please go ahead. Thank you. Well, I attended almost all of the commission meetings for this project. So I didn't come to my decision lightly. I did everything I could to try to help this be a better project. And yet I saw commission after commission recommendation left out and not even given to the council in some cases. And so I'm planning on voting against this project to address the question about downtown. The EIR says over 300,000 square feet of commercial space is likely to be made vacant in Davis. As businesses move out of the core, that's a huge hit for the core of our town. I've traveled across the country and I've seen city after city where peripheral malls and business parks are built and they kill downtowns. Based traffic, well, based traffic, perhaps I should take some extra, I'll let it go. Thank you, Colin. And Will, I see that you want to make a secondary response, please go ahead. So look, I just will say in conclusion that I think that disk is an incredible opportunity for Davis to be a leader in our world to provide high paying local jobs, to add adding to that the clean energy and affordable housing commitments and economic development and city revenue benefits of the project. I believe it's an opportunity we really ought not miss as a community. So I'm urging folks to vote yes on measure B. Thank you, Will. And Colin, I see that you want to make a secondary response, please go ahead. Thank you. Yeah, so traffic, it's going to put 24,000 of different additional cars on base. That traffic is the major part of increasing the carbon footprint of Davis by 8%. You can do all this talk about green buildings, but as long as people are driving there from out of town, this is not a green project. And all estimates are that people are going to be driving in from out of town to be working in this project. It's not a green project. So that's why I have to oppose it. Thank you so much. Thank you, Colin. Next question and the order for responding will be Colin Walsh Dillon Horton, followed by Will Arnold. This question is, how would you address the housing needs of groups such as intellectually or developmentally delayed adults and homeless individuals? And so Colin, you are first up on that. Would you mind restating the question? Sure. How would you address the housing needs of groups such as intellectually and or developmentally delayed adults and homeless individuals? Well, that's not an easy question. There's a lot of challenges to addressing both of those. The creek side that just opened will provide some housing for that can get can help with some of the homelessness issues. I'm concerned in how the city does get involved in this. Renting 40 new apartments without good oversight seems like a real could be a challenge yet. At the same time, I'm glad that the city is acting. So I don't know, I talk with my friend Harmony who works at the shelter all the time about this. And it's just clear to me that we need a lot more thinking and a lot more work on this altogether. And we need to include our groups like the shelter in those conversations. Thank you. Thank you, Colin. And Dylan, please go ahead. Thank you. Yeah, at the end of the day, this is a supply problem. I mentioned in my opening statement that I sort of from my day job, I work at supporting people with developmental disabilities and working with a number of my clients, the sort of prospects of living independently, which is a big goal for a lot of people is really curtailed or really pushed way years far into the distance because of the lack of availability of affordable housing in our community. So number one, as I mentioned in our housing topic, we need to drastically expand the availability of affordable housing in Davis, but also below market rate affordable housing. And we also have to look at the diversity of housing options that are available. I know there were a number of my clients that had some very particular housing needs as far as like where that was situated and sort of how it was set up. And so to making sure that there's not only a broader availability of affordable housing but also a broader availability of affordable housing in different types is essential to making sure that everyone in Davis has access to quality affordable housing. Thank you, Dylan. And will Arnold, please go ahead. Well, thank you. This is an incredibly personally important question to me. My oldest son, Reesi has a developmental disabilities in seventh grade now, distance learning at home. But I talk with my wife a lot about Reesi's future and housing and services that he'll have access to in about six years or so when he turns 18 and is an adult and beyond that. And I'll give a shout out to Summer House. I used to serve on the board of directors at Summer House for several years. This is a nonprofit organization in Yolo County and there's a physical house both in Woodland and one in Davis that provides housing and services for adults with developmental disabilities. They just do great work. And I'm so proud to have been a part of that too. This is something very important to me. Thank you. Thank you, Will. I see Collin that you have your hand up for a secondary response. Please go ahead. Oh, sorry, I actually didn't mean to have my hand up. Okay, great. Then we will go to the next question and the order for responses will be Dylan Horton. Will Arnold followed by Collin Walsh. The question is, what more can Davis do to increase racial diversity in city government? So please go ahead, Dylan. Well, you can elect your first African-American person to the Davis city council. That's the way you could start. I really didn't expect this question. Sorry. So, yeah, we can start by diversifying the boards that sort of govern our local governments, but also we can start by making sure that diversity is a priority and making sure that, I'm sorry, in our hiring process in the city, services that are delivered to a diverse community by diverse city staff are often the services that are best set to meet the needs of the community and are most accessible to the community. So I think we do need to, number one, as I said before, make sure we're diversifying our local elected boards, but also making sure that diversity in a number of areas, an economic class in race and gender, in sexual orientation, making sure that diversity in those categories is a priority at hiring and city staff. Thank you, Dylan. And will Arnold, please go ahead. Sure, and I of course would add diversity of ability to that list. Of course, I'm incredibly proud to be the only elected representative in the entire county at any level who has a physical disability. And I've been told by many folks how important that is for representation of folks with disabilities or just seeing someone who looks like them in this elected office. Folks with disabilities are often assumed to have limits beyond just what is obvious. I would have when I was a kid, folks would talk very loud to me as if I maybe couldn't hear them for some reason, even though it was just my arms were short. So seeing someone in elected office who has the lived experience of someone with a disability is so personally important to me as the father of two children with disabilities and somebody with a lot of friends. With disabilities, that's been something that's been so critical to me. Thank you. Thank you. Well, and Colin Walsh, please go ahead. Thank you. Well, this really goes right to a central theme of my campaign of community involvement. And one of the places that this can be best implemented is in how we recruit for our commissions and city committees. An advertisement in the enterprise reaches a certain demographic. We really need to go further and do more to seek a wide variety of involvement in our city commissions. And then those commissioners need to feel respected and valued and their participation needs to be taken into consideration when recommendations go to the council as well. And so starting with just much better outreach and then what happens next is important too. Thank you so much. Thank you, Colin. And I see two raised hands and Will, your hand was up first and then Dylan will have another opportunity to secondarily respond. Yeah, I wanted to, you know, we don't have a ton of time for these questions. So I did wanna say it is absolutely critical that we have diversity of all kinds and for, you know, including race. Davis is not a particularly racially diverse town and my opponents are exactly right that this is something that our outreach strategies and being intentional about how we ensure representation throughout our city, both in staff and in terms of deliberative bodies like commissions is very important. Thank you. Thank you, Will and Dylan, please go ahead. Well, I'll just say that, you know, our diversity or lack thereof as a community at least in the ethnic sort of realm is not an accident. I've talked in previous forums about the fact that, you know, in many early deeds in Davis, you know, it forbade people passing down property to people who look like me. And so that has an effect even decades down the line more than a century down the line in the ethnic demographics of our community. But I did just wanna underline the point that Mr. Walsh made about making that a priority in commissions, particularly when we think that the remit of that commission would really benefit from that diversity, like police accountability, like social services and parks and recreation, we should really be highlighting diversity most of all in those areas. Great, thank you, Dylan. So we are just about at the end and we don't really have enough time left on the clock to actually have everyone respond to another question. So I think we're gonna wrap our forum here. I just wanna thank all of you for participating, those of you who are candidates and also those of you who are taking up your time on this beautiful fall day to come and listen. We really appreciate it. So we're gonna conclude the forum now and I thank you all. The forum has been recorded and it will be available on the League's Facebook page by tomorrow. And there's also a short survey for you, excuse me, for when you leave the Zoom forum. If you have a few minutes, the League would really appreciate your feedback. So thank you to all. Please stay safe and have a great rest of your weekend. Thank you, everyone. Thank you.