 to Davis Media Access. We're here in the studio for another episode of The City Considerers and I'm pleased to welcome back Davis City Council member Dan Carson. Welcome back. Thank you for having me. It's been a couple months I think since we've gotten together and spoken and I was taking note that it July 11th will be a year since you were sworn in for your first term as City Council member. So let's have a little chat about that year. It's been an eventful year in our community. We've had some tragic losses. We've had some big challenges. We've had some success. So checking in with you, how's it feeling from from your seat? I'm really enjoying this. It's it's challenging. I'm learning new things every day but I feel like we're making progress on the big issues that we talked about in the campaign that we really focused on and there are all these wonderful side trips of issues in Davis that I didn't even know existed before I ran. Right. I won't even ask how many hours and how much how big your stack of paperwork is that you've had to go through. What's the biggest takeaway so far if you can encapsulate that? I think that as long as we keep working with each other closely as we have been we can make real progress. It may involve compromise amongst our points of view. This is a really congenial and hardworking group of council members and we've got a great working relationship with our city manager and our city staff. We don't count to five when we vote on every issue but I think anybody watching us up on the dice there can see us working listening to each other listening to the public that comes to testify before us trying to come to meaningful decisions that will move us ahead and I think we've done that on fiscal issues, housing, economic development and a number of others. So you've just started a laundry list there. I mean this year we've had a downtown planning process. We've had endless debates about parking. Should it be paid? Should it not be paid? We've had a lot of concern about road improvements in various areas of the town and there's just been a lot going on. Last time you were here we talked a bit about economic development I believe and you were getting ready to move into some conversations with or the council was with the university. So let's talk about some of the progress there because I think where we are as as town and gown is pretty different than where we were a couple of years ago. Absolutely and that's a huge breakthrough I think for our joint community. In fact we now have a body called a two by two by two that includes two council members, two high-level members of the campus administration and two county supervisors. We have an agenda, we have a set of obligations to each other, we have a binding and enforceable agreement. The campus has started the process of building 5,000 beds for students on campus that goes along with 4,000 beds off campus that we're building. They're providing us money to help build transportation improvements and probably the most important thing is we have an organized process for talking to each other and resolving the really big issues that we have in this community. Now lack of housing I know was kind of the the the major issue there and as you said it's being addressed on multiple fronts now. What were some of the other sticking points or some of the other places where we might need to come to better agreement? Well we wanted in general to have a sense and an understanding that that the campus would take ownership of the impacts on our community. On housing was was a very large one and probably the large one but also also fiscal matters. So for example from now on it's now written into this agreement that when they have master agreements where they take over apartment complexes those stay on the property tax rolls and help provide this community not just the city but the county and the schools the money they need to provide the services that go along with either additional students or faculty. That's just one of many examples. Another is we're going in together to rebuild the bike path along Russell that's kind of to the west of 113. Don't ride it if you wear dentures it's really bad. It's pretty bad. All right so we talked a little bit about bike travel. Let's touch on parking. I feel like we have to do that. What do you have to say about parking? It's really been a hot topic. Absolutely and you know we're trying to figure out the future of our downtown and you referenced that downtown plan sure we'll be working on that we'll be working on well into the next year. How we manage cars when I knocked on doors as a candidate over and over and over I heard from folks at the door saying look I have a real trouble parking downtown. How are you gonna fix this? Parking meters on the street did not go over. There was a strong visceral reaction to that. We listened and we compromised and we we are providing additional paid parking in strategic locations and parking lots downtown and that's nothing new. We've already had a paid parking lot in particular down by the train station we think it's really important because we know there's a share of the parking there that is taken up by folks who drive in from the Sacramento region come across the causeway take our parking spots and jump on the M track station trains from there. Because we don't charge for it right? Right. It's open season those spots are filled up on weekdays by 6 a.m. we want to take that back as a resource for us and that will involve in part providing parking charges and our plan is to include discounts for our local folks who want to drive down there and take the train. Now parking was just one piece of the overall downtown planning process I referenced so let's talk about that for a minute. There was a whole design charrette process. There was a a lot of opportunities for public input and where do we stand with that now? What's been your role with that? Sure. I'm one of two city council liaisons to our downtown planning advisory commission. I go to all the meetings I can. I go to a lot of meetings so I don't make everyone but I do what I can and really the cornerstone of that plan to me is economic development. We're going to go through a process where people will know what they can do with their property. It's form based code what's the shape and feel and height that's allowed and if there's a historical resource that needs to be protected we'll draw a line around that and say not here but creating certainty for people to invest is one of the keys we think to spurring additional investment in downtown and we've had some you know good first steps. Mars has set up a research center in our downtown so high income jobs supported going out to our local restaurants. That's at fifth and G right? That's right. We think it's a model for other things that we could make happen. Okay. I wasn't sure I was going to ask you about this as a member of the former broadband advisory task force. Everything is fair game. But everything is fair game. So we the the broadband task force closed out its work a few weeks ago last month and there was a council meeting in which you had written an op-ed with concern really about the fiscal impact of the project. So I wanted to give you an opportunity to just say a few more words about that. I know the vote was really was in favor of supporting the the task force recommendation that more research is needed and so if you could maybe talk about if there's any movement there there may not be at this point in the council year. Right now we just made our decision there to move forward do some additional work trying to look at the situation. The concern I raised was really what came out of two very good consultant reports that were produced under the auspices of the broadband task force itself. And and it raised really serious concerns about the idea of our having a hundred and thirty six million dollar bond issue a huge significant tax subsidies at a time when just in the last year this committee failed to pass a parcel tax measure to fix our streets and roads. So it's a difficult path. I think there are there is a path forward. What we all want is competition. We don't want a monopoly by AT&T and Comcast. We want to bring in new partners and leverage the assets that the city has there and in other respects to see if we can create more competition create higher higher levels of service. And it is an economic development tool. It's just we don't my personal view is it's going to be very challenging to try to do this with a huge subsidy from the taxpayers. I just don't think they'll support that. OK. And one of your concerns was you referenced a large funding gap that the city has. Can you talk a little bit more about that? Sure. When I previously was on the finance and budget commission and its chair with the work of some very good members of our commission, we produced 20 year projections with also with the help of city staff that showed that we've got not a deficit or imminent bankruptcy, but in the long term we lack the resources to pay all of our personnel costs like pensions and retiree health care. We lack all the money we need to keep our streets and roads and parks and city buildings up to snuff. We're not talking about the money to build new 50 meter pools. We're talking about just keeping roads at an appropriate level of service over time. And we don't we have work to do. We're turning over every rock every day at city hall looking for strategies that either generate additional revenue or constrained costs. We've had some success, but we have a lot more work to do there and we're not out of the woods. So taking on a huge new financial liability would be very worrisome. Now we have an election coming up next March and are we going to be seeing, I can't remember if we're going to be seeing parcel tax renewal in that in that particular if that's later in the year in 2020. So in terms of what the school district does with the parcel tax, we've yet to hear from them what their timing is intended to be. What the city will have is an effort renewal of its one cent sales tax that we added on. And it's a huge issue for our city. It's about nine million in a typical year of about $60 million general fund. And that general fund is what supports fire, police, parks, senior center. The services that we really treasure around this place. The two-year budget we just adopted this last week assumes renewal of the tax measure at its current level. That issue will start to be discussed by our council even next month. The whole the whole issue of taxation is very complex as chair of the arts alliance. I've learned a bit about the transient occupancy tax and how among many other things it funds some of our public art projects. So so thank you voters for that. Thank you council for that. But there's just a lot of different ways in which we as a community have chosen to tax ourselves. Whether we'll continue to want to do that I think is is a valid question right now. And the hotel tax is a really great example where the foresight of the park city council I whom I advised as a commissioner but they were the folks up there voting and making the decisions. They decided to to provide approval for a couple of new extended stay hotels. The one on on down by the target off of mace boulevard is very close to completion now and we know that's going to generate summer in the realm of five to six hundred thousand dollars a year for the city year after year to pay for all those those good things that we need. Yeah so I know we're getting down to our last couple of minutes. What do you think is lies in the year ahead for you? Any particular priorities you're looking forward to tackling? Well first of all that you mentioned measure oh that's that's a really important one and I'm I'm anticipating I'm going to play a significant role in helping to pull together the campaign to renew that measure next March. That downtown plan we're going to be reaching critical decisions in around August we expect a draft of that plan to come forward. Okay. We'll have a period for all of our community to weigh in and tell us what they think about it and then we'll go through an environmental process and then we now just know that there'll be a proposal for an innovation center at the east end of town and we haven't seen the details it's it they've dusted off a proposal that was being considered at City Hall for a couple of years. Right. And so we're very interested in seeing the details what they have in mind and again we're really trying to encourage folks in our community to weigh in with the applicants directly but also with our city staff and give us their ideas on what should that look like. Yeah. What should our goals be for any project like that and then we'll we'll see if it's a good project or bad. I'm I'm optimistic it fills a need we really need to keep these smart one-hills coming out of UC Davis here and and helping to produce revenue for the city and job. And you're right that idea of an innovation center has been around for I don't even know how long but I feel like I I talked to people 15 years ago about it so. I know you you are seeing a number of really important issues kind of coming to a head. Yeah. We are really trying to move forward in the city on the big decisions. We're not afraid to take on parking meters or we you know we worked last week to try to rearrange our budget a bit to put more money into fixing our streets and roads with the money we have. We know there's more we need to do but we're we're we're taking those head on and we're not running away from it. Homeless housing you name it I think you can look at a council that has taken these issues seriously they're all work in progress but we're we're really working on it. We didn't even get to touching on homelessness because there has been there been a number of community forms and a number of developments on that front so I'm going to have to have you back another time so we can tackle that. But meantime I want to thank you for taking the time as always to come in and chat and tell people the best way to reach you if you would. Sure. It's my email address is the best way to reach me and that's dcarson at cityofdavis.org. Okay and I've learned that you're pretty responsive so thank you for that. All right you've been watching the city considers here at Davis Media Access you can find episodes online through davismedia.org you can also catch them on DCTV channel 15 on the Comcast channel and on our YouTube channel under Davis Media Access. Thanks so much for tuning in and check out the rest of the programming while you're there.