 Good evening. You're tuned in to Davis Media Access. It is November 3rd, 2020. And this is our live local election programming. We're glad you're here to join us. We know that there's a lot at stake nationally. We know that there's a lot of anxiety going around at that. Tonight, we're gonna focus on what's local and what's affects our lives on a very daily basis. I'm Autumn LaBeirano. I'm the executive director of DMA. And I've produced our election night coverage here for the last 20 years. I've never hosted before. And I'm joined by three co-hosts tonight who I don't think have ever hosted election programming before, but I could be wrong. Joining me for the first hour is Davis City Council Member, Dan Carson. And there he is. Welcome, Dan. Hello, thank you. Thank you. And in hours two and three, respectively, we'll have Council Member, Brett Lee and Mayor Gloria Partita. So, Dan, I'm so glad you could join us tonight. I've been really looking forward to sharing this hour with you. Well, thank you. I enjoyed the invitation. Great. All right, will you start off by helping me tell viewers about some of the things they're gonna be seeing and hearing this evening? I'm happy to do that. You're watching live election night coverage from Davis Media Access, Community's Nonprofit Media and Technology Center. This show wraps up months of work by DMA in providing voter education programming for races from county supervisor to Congress to school board and city races. This show airs on DCTV Channel 15 on the Comcast System in Davis as a live stream at davismedia.org forward slash election. You are also listening to this program live on KDRT LP 95.7 FM in Davis, California. And now we've gotten legal stuff out of the way. We'd like to thank all of the candidates and campaigns for participating in local election programming, as we'll note throughout the evening, local elections and down ballot races are extremely important in the life of our communities that they can often get lost in the shuffle in these high-profile national elections like the one we're going through. That doesn't happen here in Davis. And it's good work going on here tonight, I think. Thank you, Dan. You know, in a normal year, we would have a full studio here tonight. We'd have a large crew. We'd have all our equipment that we're used to using to help us out. And as we all know, it's been anything but a normal year. So this entire system, this entire season of election programming has been accomplished using remote technologies. And I really need to take a moment to give a shout out to my technical staff here at DMA and in particular, Dianna Doshka, who's directing tonight and also Alex Silva-Satter, Bryce Parker and Derek Service. And also thank you to our other staff, Jeff Shaw, Dianne Crumley and Jim Buchanan for their support. And manning the KDRT stream tonight is our board member and KDRT programmer, Bill Wagman. So thank you, Bill. And I'd like to thank my co-host, Dan and Brett and Gloria who will join us later. I really don't think it's every community where this would happen, where people who are some of the busiest people I know would take time out to engage in this night of local elections and democracy and community media. So I think it says a lot about the people who serve here. I think it says a lot about the importance of having local media sources. So now I wanna say that our staff here spends a great deal of time helping others get word out about their services. And that includes other nonprofits and schools and arts groups and so on. And what we do is highlight local voices and opinions, especially those that are left out of mainstream media. Local election is a place that we put a lot of time and energy and resources. As Dan said, this is hundreds of hours over the last couple of months. So we are asking you to support this work with a donation of any size at any point during the evening, go to davismedia.org and just click that donate button for us. And thank you. All right, we're gonna be moving a lot of guests in and out. I believe we have 22 interviews over the next three hours. And our first guest this evening is going to be Leah Dara. And Leah, and there she is, welcome. Hello. It's great to see you. With yourself. So Leah ran unopposed. And so we know that we can say congratulations Leah because you will be seated on the Davis Joint Unified School District representing area two. And that is a seat that is up for election because Alan Fernandez decided not to run again. So let me start off by asking you, were you surprised to be unopposed? Did you expect that? 2020 has been a year of surprises. So how could I be surprised? I think I hope that it is a sign of faith in my trustee area and my community that people felt like I could take over for this area from Alan's capable hands. And so I've considered it to be an opportunity for me to focus more of my attention on community outreach as opposed to having to run against an opponent. Leah, this is Dan. Nice to chat with you again. So we're here in the age of COVID. Most people would be running the other way trying to deal with family emergencies, teaching their kids algebra and a variety of other things just to survive. You ran the other direction towards public office. What prompted you to do that in these times? Well, Dan, I am doing those other things you mentioned. I'm helping to distance learn with a high schooler, a youngest, and we are dealing with the family emergencies that we all deal with during this time. But I felt like my experience working in California State PTA and policy legislation work and my 20 plus years in our community volunteering and in classrooms side by side with parents and bleachers and at auctions and fundraisers that I could come to our community and help us at a time like now. And I'd have the history of what's been in Davis but also the innovation and the knowledge of what's going on now in policy. So one short-term issue you will deal with immediately upon taking office is this transition for teaching the kids in a remote situation. Are you able to move back to a classroom even on a part-time basis? How do you see that playing out? Well, my crystal balls out on loan tonight but I'll tell you there's so many changing factors. It's a little bit hard to tell you. I think that as a community, we know that our kids do best when they can be in a classroom with a teacher with their friends in their normal routine. And as a community, as a district, I think we all want that. We also want it in a safe way so our students and our staff are safe. So it's a delicate balance Dan to be honest to find that way that we protect our community but that we also make sure that our students are able to access their learning. You may also be walking into an unprecedented budget crisis. On the one hand, the voters kindly approve measure G to provide additional resources for teacher pay. You've got a bond issue for school construction but the state budget is collapsing as we speak. And maybe if there's a new democratic administration, you get an aid bill that helps schools but it's not a certain thing at this point, is it? No, I have to admit it kept me up at night as I considered throwing my name into the hat, into the ring and as I've gone through the process of being a candidate, I definitely have considered this at great length. I can only say that I was through our last great recession. I watched our district make very difficult cuts and I believe that whatever we do, we have to have our communities buy in and understanding of whatever we do as a district. And I would also advocate that we protect our most vulnerable students and keep them as far from the cuts as possible. This is also a period, I'll go ahead. Where we're about out of time with Leah, these interviews are gonna go really fast tonight. Sorry, Dan. Leah, I wanted to give you a chance to thank whoever you wanna thank for their support in your campaign. Thank you. Yeah, I had two amazing campaign coordinators. Leslie Hunter and Tracy Tomosky did amazing things but I had a staff of community members who helped and took in various jobs for me and I just appreciate them all and I will continue to listen to our community and hear what concerns are. My email is always there for you. My phone is always available. Stop be it nugget and tell me what you're thinking and I will do my best to serve all of our children. So thank you all very much. Thank you so much for joining us briefly and enjoy the rest of your election evening. Congratulations, Leah. Thank you, appreciate it, thank you. All right, next up I'm gonna be speaking with Andrew Cullen and we're gonna say goodbye to Dan for just a couple of minutes. He'll be back. We're gonna bring Andrew in. Andrew was running for the at-large position on the Davis Joint Unified School District, Board of Trustees and there he is. Welcome, Andrew. Hi, thanks for having me. You bet, it's good to see you again. I like that. In our few minutes that we have together, you mentioned when we talked earlier in the season that you were relatively new to the community, not brand new. What did running for this office help you learn about this community? Well, I think one thing is, as I've reflected, I've really seen this community is just how engaged it is in local politics. I think it's unique. I'm from Marin County, San Rafael, born and raised and I've spent a lot of time in Berkeley as well for school and work. And I was really very surprised by the amount of engagement that Davis residents have in local politics. I've received phone calls on a Sunday where I've talked to a single voter for an hour. And I don't know if that occurs necessarily outside of our community as frequently. What kinds of issues did they bring up with you? So a few that I felt strong to talk to as a board candidate. I think right now with COVID technology is top of mind. But I don't want to remind some of the other things that happened that are important to voters before COVID and all this remote learning, the role of assessments in schools. Again, the budget is a big issue. So I really, I think those are pretty much the three that I've heard several times. And what about serving on school board called you to service? Yeah, so I worked as a classified school employee for several years before I worked at, before I switched over to Lawrence Berkeley lab. And I've been, I basically view education as the greatest social equalizer that we have in society. This opportunity looked like a very unique opportunity to get back at a critical time given the skills I have. I looked at who's on the board, it's in the historical context of the board and thought that I can make a real impact right now with what's facing this community. I have skills I thought could add a lot of value. So who lent you support during this campaign and who might you want to say thank you to this evening? I'm gonna really say thank you to my wife. She's, I've, this is my, this has been a steep learning curve for me. So there are many things I would do differently in a campaign in the future, but really my wife has been my strongest supporter and advocate as I've gone through this. So I would make sure. Obviously we don't have results yet, but if you're not elected this evening, do you think you would run again or what comes next for you? I think I would run again, yeah. I just wanna say, I was thinking about this as I went for a bike race evening, my saving anxiety for the national and local elections is fairly high, kind of an unusual way. And I just want the voters to know that regardless of who wins this at-large short-term position, Davis, the district is getting, I think a very qualified candidate with different skills, but my opponent is very qualified as well. And so I feel good either way. I've learned a lot. I think that I plan to stay in the Davis community and run again if an opportunity like this comes up. Well, we really appreciate you putting yourself forward. As I said, at the top of the hour, it really, it takes a lot for candidates to put themselves out there. It's a lot of hard work. It's a lot of sacrifice. You mentioned your wife, good move there, by the way. And- She's not watching. And still good to give her a shout out. So we wish you all the best of luck and I hope you have a good rest of your evening. Thanks so much for making time to join us here on Election Night. Thank you. All right, take care, Andrew. All right, Dan is back and we're gonna be bringing in Betsy Heider next and he's going to interview him and I'm gonna dip out for just a minute. Hi, Betsy, welcome. Thank you for having me. And hello, Betsy. It's good to put the face together with the voice on the phone. It really is. Hi, Dana. Welcome to the world. And I don't know if you know, but my maiden name is Carson, so you have a warm place in my heart. Okay, as long as you don't hold it against me. Yeah. Let me ask you. So how are you feeling at this point? You've gone through the blood, sweat and tears that a race like this certainly entails. We don't have any numbers to point to, but what's your feeling about how things are gonna go tonight? No idea. I'm super excited though because I know we did everything we could and I just had so much help and I'm just super excited. I don't, you know, I've only been on the outside of this process and so I look at, I don't know what to say. It's just that I hear everybody say that on TV and now I know what they mean. Like I'm so grateful and just optimistic. So. So how did this COVID environment impact your ability to campaign? How do you think it affected the race in general? You know, in my area specifically, I felt like it was a big barrier for, you know, my density areas were the Pioneer neighborhood and the El Macero neighborhood. And so for my biggest challenge with El Macero, frankly, I just really felt like I had a hard time connecting. I did do a door to door, but it was just kind of leaving something there very intrusively and I didn't, so that's my big unknown is how did I do in that area? I had a few signs, not a lot. Just a tough time connecting with that community. Depending on how things play out tonight, we could go from one woman on the school board to three. You think that's an important dynamic here if that happens? I really do. I feel like we're suffering from sort of, you know, the events of the summer, it was just very, very difficult for our community. So I feel like it's really difficult. I think representation is so important and so I feel like it'll be more balanced. I honestly have battled a lot within myself of whether, you know, in area five, whether I could represent the way I want to because I do have children of color. It's just been a difficult election but I will tell you that I honestly believe that I'm the best candidate for area five. I really do. Which brings up one more interesting question, which is this is a novelty for us on city council as well as for the school board for the first time competing in district elections. One theory was it would make it easier for more folks to access and compete in a race. Do you think that's true or how do you see it? What I know about the area races is that I wouldn't have run otherwise. So I think the barrier to entry for running for a position like this was the benefit. I don't, you know, I will see how the board functions with area elections but for sure it's bringing out a different cohort of candidates and I think that's a good thing. So, you know, once we come together as a board I'm confident that we can still represent Davis uniformly, really am. What was the main message you wanted to get through to voters? I just really believe that this is a unique period of time that not just, I feel like we need a specific skill set right now to deal with the issues on the table and I think I have it. And I don't think I would have ran at a different time but I do feel like at this particular time there's an opportunity here to help with not only remote learning, modernizing our school system, diversifying our educators, et cetera. I just feel like there's some stuff I bring to the table that I think I'll be a good voice for area five. Very good. So you guys, I am so excited and I just, I know you got other interviews, I could talk to you all night but I just can't wait to see what happens. Oh good, well thank you so much for joining us. Is there anyone you wanna thank, Betsy, who helped with your campaign? Oh my goodness, there's so many. Can I just say, do I have, how much time do I have? A second? About 30 seconds. Yeah. So, you know, I just wanna say that I think so many parents that are committed to this school district that have helped me that don't even have children anymore in the school district, but they are the undergirding of our success. Laurie Duesenberg, Carrie Ziegler, Joy Kleinberg, Joyce Lee, Lisa Quiskar, Deborah Brayton, AJR Milio, Marisa Lee, Leahy, just to name a few. My family and of course all of my endorsers, former DJUSD trustees. I'm just so grateful to my family and to all those folks who have carried me this far. I, you know, I never planned to do this. So this has just been such a great journey for me. So thanks for, and thanks for the enterprise and Davis Media Access just for letting me get to know the voters. Thank you. You bet. Thanks so much for joining us and enjoy the rest of your evening. That's it. Thanks guys. Thank you. All right. The way this evening played out, we actually have a little bit of a chunk of time here in the middle of hour one. And so Dan and I get to have a conversation. Dan, let me lead off with what you were saying about the impact of COVID because that's something I've wanted to talk to you about since that first fateful Davis city council meeting on Zoom. What's it been like to try to run municipal government as a council member during this strange time? You know, I think on the whole, after a bit of a disastrous start, we got Zoom bombed for those who don't recall the story, a group of racist teenagers were able to intrude on our programming and interrupt the proceedings. Mayor Lee at the time handled it was completely unflappable and was most professional in handling the situation, but we learned from that. And so some interesting things happened. So for example, instead of the theory that it was going to chase people away from participation in city government, we had more people than ever leaving public comment in two or three minutes sound bites that they could record actually on their own schedule or they could do so in the middle of our meeting. We had often 50 or 60 commenters on some of the controversies. So in that sense, it was wide open. And we knew that while we certainly did focus on the critical life and death issues our community faced and keeping our businesses in our town alive, we also know we just couldn't bring government to a halt. We had really important work we need to continue with. Yeah, yeah. And you know, it's not just the impact of COVID either. Our nation is in a state of an anxiety attack tonight because the stakes are so high in this presidential election for both sides. Everyone's feeling it. So there's that election year. There's also the social and political uprising around Black Lives Matter and the fight for equity and representation. And so you mentioned the businesses. I know one of the things that our city council is gonna be grappling with is the economic fallout from the pandemic. Can you talk about that for a minute? Yeah, so because of the loss of revenue from our hotels and retailers, our assumption was we would take a $20 million hit over several years. And that represents pain for the city, but it represents pain for our businesses. They seem to have been fast on their feet in adapting to the rules that the public health authorities allowed to find ways to do retail with social distancing. Of course, we're doing an incredible amount of takeout business. And of course, a lot of folks are going out of their way on a weekly basis to provide a lifeline to those businesses and steer business to them. And that's a lot of folks that started buying food from Safeway and Nugget and doing a lot more cooking at home. So those businesses have done okay. But we know with the students gone from town that many businesses are lagging. The bars are closed and some of them, of course, like the veers are on hold now. There has been real hurt. We're doing everything we can. We've tried to, well, we have enacted a ban on evictions not only of people who are residential tenants but also commercial tenants. We tried to provide relaxed rules and paying utility bills. We're doing what we can to help. Yeah, it's not just municipalities that are gonna be feeling this pain either. It's the county, it's the state, it's the federal government. It's as we were talking with school board candidates tonight, school districts are gonna continue to feel that squeeze. So it really is very far reaching and probably not something we're gonna be able to move past and quickly in the next year or two, it's gonna be with us for a while. Let me ask you, so you're in your first term as council member and you ran during an at-large election before the transition to district elections. So I'm gonna turn the tables on you. You were asking Betsy what it was like, would she have run if it weren't a district election? What's your thought about, it might be too early to ask you about running again, but what have you been feeling watching people run and what's your sense of district elections? Sure, and the main thing, of course, the question, the policy questions for us to all try to evaluate is, this do what folks had intended and hoped for. And so I've looked at a couple of measures and I think the jury is still out in several respects. There's a question of, did it affect how many people ran and who ran? We went from only four candidates for council in 2016 till the race in 2018 that I ran in, where I was one of nine candidates for two seats. So in this election, you have also again, nine candidates. So I'm not sure that's about district elections. I think it is about a continued age of civic activism that's been continuing in these last few years. That's probably it more than anything. It definitely had an effect on how the races are being run. You know, we ran a successful campaign by me and my team knocking on the 10,000 doors. Very few candidates have done that and I'm glad very few have. They've used other techniques. They've done literature drops. Facebook has become on big. We have one candidate for county supervisor who's experimenting with using cable television ads. And some of these things were coming. This may have accelerated the pace of those changes and how people reach out. So, and some of these things are low cost approaches. So maybe that is in keeping with what district elections were all about. But I'll tell you, if you look at the campaign finance reports, I don't see much slack off on the money that folks have raised. One candidate raised 50 grand, another 40 grand. Of course, that's in all cases much more than these front runners raised much more money than their challengers. But I haven't seen any sign and there are still a lot of folks, for example, purchasing good old print ads in the Davis enterprise. There was a lot more spending there than I would have anticipated in a district election scenario where supposedly you're only talking to one-fifth of their readers but people still found it worthy to invest. Yeah, I've heard almost every candidate for city council and whatever district during this election say, well, yes, I'm running in the district but it still matters to me what the rest of the community thinks. So I think that's a good mindset because although you are representing a district, you'd also be serving as a body of five that has to make decisions together, has to work together. So I think that's not a bad mindset. But you're right, one of the premises was that if you have to reach fewer people, you can spend a lot more money and it would be less of a barrier for running for office. So what I'm hearing you say is jury's still out and it might take another election cycle of this to see how that pans out. I would also just add quickly that the other measure folks might use is this in some ways increase diversity. So on the school board, as we just discussed, you could be going from one woman who left to depending on the choices of voters, three women on board as trustees. On the city council, it's a little more complicated. We could go from one woman to two. On the other hand, we have a council member of Japanese descent who is leaving. So I think it's gonna take some time to see how this impacts the diversity of our governing bodies. Great. Let's talk a little bit more about your own experience on council. For me, one of the perks of having you and Brett and Gloria join us tonight is that you've done what everyone else on the show is hoping to do tonight. You are serving, or in Brett's case, he's getting ready to finish serving, but you're serving on the Davis city council. So you were elected to public office. So you ran on a platform of fiscal responsibility. That is what I remember about your campaign. And that's what I remember talking about with you when I first met you. And of course, you came into the, you're helping to govern during possibly the most complicated time, fiscally and otherwise that we've experienced in a while. Let's hear a little bit about your experience during this time. What feels like a great success to you so far and what is something that you find yourself struggling with? Sure. I think we've made great headway on the fiscal issues that I did run on. Just last week, council adopted a 10-year plan to fully finance road and bike path repair. I led the campaign to renew our existing sales tax and measure Q, which got an 83% positive public vote, more than any tax, local tax measure in the entire state of California. Last March, we, when COVID hit and we did get hit by that $20 million threat, we quickly turned around and enacted budget cuts, painful cuts, and furloughs for our city employees to address the matter. So the fiscal forecast that we do shows that instead of that $8 to $10 million gap that we had back a couple of years ago, that number is actually declined and on a declining path. We need the help of the voters with economic development tonight to make greater strides in that direction, so we'll see. You also asked though about, what are the challenges? I guess I find this incredibly positive working environment and I'm not a negative person, but maybe it sounds Pollyanna-ish, but I'm really excited the fact that we've had a camaraderie on that council. We don't all vote the same way on issues like paid parking and other matters, but we often find compromises. Not everybody likes compromise around here, and that is one of the difficult things that you reach a compromise and folks on both sides are very critical, but we just need to find a way on these difficult issues to move forward and sometimes we just have to take that criticism. I wanna bring it back to COVID for just a minute because I'm curious about how the city and UC Davis have partnered together to work on COVID and the city and the county as well. Can you speak to those? Sure, we've got a wonderful joint program called Healthy Davis Together. You can find it on a website by that name if you use those words. So it bringing back these students to campus, there was an obvious concern. As has happened in other college towns, would we be faced with a big uptick in exposure to coronavirus that could be dangerous both for students and the people in our community? So they put together and we collaborated with them in a very extensive program with all sorts of safeguards, check-ins, regular testing, quick isolation of anyone found to have been exposed. And so far it's working, fingers crossed, but the exposure rate, the students has been very, very low. It's also resulting in programs that are gonna be on this side of the boundary line. We're already providing assistance to our businesses so that they can welcome these students without and do so in a very safe way, help our downtown businesses to thrive again. We have a ways to go, but it's been a great level of collaboration. Yeah, and the early numbers coming out of UC Davis are actually pretty good relative to some other areas in the county at this moment in time anyway. So that's encouraging. We have a very responsible community on this. Now, we may find out next week that there's an outbreak and we need to not take anything for granted here, but I think that the overwhelming numbers of the folks in our town have taken these concerns very seriously. They're wearing masks, they're socially distancing, and folks like me who are now of Medicare age, by and large, you just stay in home and that's the right thing for folks to do until the situation changes. And we will tell you when it's safe, but we have to be honest with you, we're still in a period where this is not fully controlled. We need to take strong measures to be safe. Absolutely. Dan, we're gonna take a break for a video that's about a minute, a minute and a half. So we're gonna run that and we'll be back for a few more minutes of chat before our next candidate. And today we'll be discussing the wildfires that are raging up and down the West Coast of America. You are tuned in to the COVID-19 Community Report here on KDRT 95.7 FM in Davis, California. Today we'll be broadcasting a bunch of songs requested by our fellow seniors. Good evening and welcome to the first ever Yolo Community Care Continuum Virtual Gala. So I'd like to see us as a community we can be gathered to support our students, to support our staff and ensure that every student in Davis feels safe, feels welcome at school. I now call to order the meeting of the Governing Board of the Davis Joint Unified School District. People that are listening are going to thoroughly enjoy your video back on the road. Thank you, Connor. So we're about to march, right? Show me what democracy looks like. This is what democracy looks like. Hello and welcome to in the studio. No justice. No peace. No racist. No race. All right, that was a little breather, a little peek at some of the other things that Davis Media Access does when we're not busy putting together local election coverage. I know we're going to have our next guest in a couple of minutes. Dan, I wanted to take just a minute to talk about the state propositions. There were 12 of them. There's a big difference. I know that there aren't a lot of results there early. So maybe we'll look at them later in the evening. But there's a big difference between those that are put on the ballot by the legislature and those that are put on the ballot by a certain number of signatures collected. I know like me, you're a former journalist and a political junkie. So what would you like to say about the propositions this year? Anything? I kind of looked at them as a group and saw three main themes that I distilled that we should take a look at to see if there's any sort of change in the direction of our populace. One is our folks willing to tinker with Prop 13. There's two ballot measures, the split roll measure, which is Prop 15. There is one that's a much less radical change in terms of Prop 19 that has to do with property taxes for inheritance and when people move down to smaller homes when they're seniors and so forth. We'll see if folks are in a mood to touch that. They haven't been willing to do much except tinker around the edges. The other is, are they want to return to the old war on crime? There is a couple of measures, one that goes in the direction if you're giving Crowley's a right to vote, that goes one direction, but there's also Prop 20, which is a measure sponsored by the DAs that would have the effect of increasing prison sentences among other things. And so we'll get a sense from that and the money bail one, how people are feeling about criminal justice issues these days. And the last one is, are we gonna have a new spark of activism that could affect measures like rent control, which affirmative action, the things that touch the rules for Uber and Lyft, which are really workplace economic issues, very basic labor issues. We'll see how those things play out, but those are the ones, the themes I would look for. Okay, yeah, it's very telling how the propositions go, how people are feeling about the economy and such in general. So I'm gonna be taking a look at those later tonight. All right, so we have our next interview coming up and it is Dan is going to interview Vigdus, Asmanson, Vigdus, welcome. It's great to see you again and I am gonna duck out for just a minute and let you two have a conversation. Hello Vigdus. Hi Dan, how are you? I'm doing great. So you walked into this in the middle of a bit of a tumble. It wasn't your fault, but there was somebody the school board had appointed for a short-term appointment and then the decision was made through a petition to halt that person's service, opening this up for election. How did you feel about walking into all of that and how is it played out in your view? Well, I mean, that was certainly a surprise, but at the beginning and the point now is the exact same that I want to serve and that I'm ready to serve and that I think that I have something to contribute. So what was your key message? What did you try to get across in this race? I think mostly that I am from this community, that I know this community and that I know education really well. I have been in the educational field for such a long time. I taught your son, I have been a teacher for 19 years. I'm now working at the Department of Education and I really know the perspective of education from every viewpoint, from the classroom, from the administration, from the district level. And I think that that's a really important perspective to have when we're making board decisions. And this is a small town. My son, Glenn, says hello. Hello, Glenn. So one of the themes that we talked a little bit about is this social unrest, concern about racial division. I noticed, of course, that the YCDI, the Yellow Committee for Diverse and Inclusive Elections conducted a really great campaign forum where they interviewed the candidates, both the city candidates and the school board candidates. What did you take away from your participation in that event? I think one of the most wonderful things is just how involved people are ready to be and the voices that are ready to come out. It's so nice to see so many people wanting to speak up and give their perspective and make sure that their perspective is heard. Not just letting things happen the way that they have always happened, but making sure that everybody has a chance to speak their own story and let people know about it. Because I think it makes everybody's lives richer to find out what's happening with everybody else. How do you think those discussions will translate into school policy, at least if you're elected? Yeah, I think that that's a really good question. I think that it's something that we need to be thinking about. Our community actually is extremely diverse and we have so much strength in all of that diversity. And I think that people are really aware of that and wanna be bringing that forward. For example, with the Ethnic Studies Curriculum and the work groups that we're having going along with those. So many people have something to contribute and I think that people are really ready to bring that into our curriculum, into our schools, into our classrooms. And it's gonna be, I think it's gonna be awesome for our kids. So what was your campaign experience like? It's been so fun. I mean, it's certainly been strange with remote campaigning. Obviously it's been different from, we've got my littlest campaign manager here helping me out. So yeah, it was definitely strange with remote campaigning but it was really fun to talk to so many people. There's so many former board members, city council members, former city council members, so many people that were willing to speak with me and tell me about their experience and give me advice and to help me out. And that has just been so helpful to me. So how did you manage that with your own young ones in the house and you, of course, it's cheating. You're a teacher by profession. So there are many people now who wish they had your expertise. But they had to be talented. I get a little bit excited, yeah. I'm definitely probably trying to help them more than they actually want me to be helping them. It's been, it has been a lot of fun for me actually. Probably, yeah. They probably don't appreciate how much I'm trying to ask them all their questions and get involved. Their teachers have been doing a really wonderful job. I really want to honor all of the hard work that teachers have been putting in. I know that they've been under so much stress and they have just been trying so hard and working so hard to bring an experience to the students. What's the first thing you think you'd do if you get elected and take office? You know, one of the things that I'm really concerned about at this time is that I know that our parents are also under a lot of pressure and we have been recognizing that our teachers are under a lot of pressure and that our students have these social emotional needs that we need to be addressing that they're not getting because they're not in the schools. But I think that we also really need to be concerned about our parents and think about what sorts of supports we can give to our parents that we often give to teachers at this time. This is a difficult time of year in the classroom if you're a teacher. Right after Halloween is one of the hardest times of the year and I know that that's hitting parents right now. And so I think that we need to be thinking about how we can support them in the same way that we support our teachers at this time of year. They're gonna get through it and they're doing such wonderful things. I see so many parents reaching out and asking for support and supporting each other and it's been really wonderful to watch. Well, thank you for joining us. We're at the end of our time. So real quickly, who would you like to thank? Who helped you? I need to thank my whole family. I've got all of my little campaign buddies out here. All of the little Munchkins that have been helping me out so much. I could not have done this without my family. They have just been absolutely wonderful. Thanks so much. Enjoy the rest of your evening. Goodbye, campaign chief there. Thank you. Thanks for joining us. All right, next up is we're gonna be, I'm gonna be chatting with Kelsey Fortune. So we're gonna roll Dan off for just a second and he'll be right back while we bring Kelsey on. Kelsey was a candidate for the newly created district five on the Davis city council. And there she is, welcome. Hi, Autumn, it's good to see you. Good to see you again. You and I have crossed paths a number of times in the last couple of months. And I wanna say that you are now within a month of finishing your PhD in economics from UC Davis. So congratulations to you on that. Thank you very much. When we spoke earlier in the season, you talked a lot about what you love about this community where you've lived for about seven years. I'm curious what you heard from the voters of district five about their needs and concerns during this campaign. Yeah, I mean, district five is definitely unique relative to the rest of Davis being on the other side of the highway and kind of not having representation. I think one of the big things that South Davis is looking forward to with districting is just having someone on the city council who they feel a more direct connection to and someone who will voice their concerns actually. Right. One of your major points as you were running was your concerns about public safety and how it's addressed in Davis. So if you were elected, what would be the first thing you would wanna work on in the area of public safety? Yeah, so we have a lot of work to do as a country when it comes to public safety. I think the first thing that we need to look into is identifying all of the things that would be better, people who would be better served and issues that could be better done by people who are not armed officers. We ask police to do a lot and a lot of the time it's not things that they're necessarily trained for and there are people who are trained for those things. Yeah, yeah. So what do you think comes next for you? Obviously if you're elected to council you have a big job ahead of you and if you're not, what are you gonna do with that PhD? That's a good question. So I have not quite figured that out yet. It's a weird time to even try to be, looking for jobs and on top of the painting. That is a lot of work. So I've got a lot on my plate right now but I plan on staying in the area continuing to be involved in pushing Davis forward. Definitely would encourage everyone to look at commission applications which are due in a few days. That's a very important way that we can all have a bit more of a voice. Convince someone earlier today that they should take a look. So I'm hoping we can get some new and more diverse voices in the conversations that we're having. Yeah, you're absolutely right. That's where a lot of city council members and school board members got their start was serving on a civic commission. So who would you like to thank? Who aided and abetted you during your campaign? You make it sound like I'm some kind of criminal. I would like to thank all my friends and family, everyone has been incredibly supportive. The city of Davis has really embraced my candidacy. I know I came in as kind of a lesser known candidate and I really appreciate all the work that I've gotten from current and former commission and council members. Everyone has been really fantastic. Well, it's been a pleasure to meet you during the campaign and we wish you the best and enjoy the rest of your evening. Thanks for joining us here tonight. Thanks, Autumn. All right, take good care. That was Kelsey Fortuna. And Kelsey was running for the newly created District Five on the Davis City Council. Okay, Dan, this is your official interview. Earlier, you alluded to the voters and economic development tonight. And of course you did that because you served as the chair of the Yes on Measure B, also known as DISC, this campaign season. I'm going to look at my notes here and read this for a minute. This is what was on the ballot regarding Measure B. Shall Resolution 20-110 be adopted to amend the Davis General Plan to approve a mixed use development comprised of innovation center, housing and retail uses by changing the land use designations. That's key for the Davis Innovation and Sustainability Campus and MACE Triangle properties from agriculture and public slash quasi-public to innovation center, urban agricultural transition area, general commercial, and by establishing the baseline project features. And as I noted, also called DISC. So much like some of the state propositions we were talking about, this is hardly the first go round for the idea of regardless of what it's been called, it's been called an R&D campus technology park. It's been called a lot of things over the years. You chaired the campaign this time. So briefly, what benefits do you really believe that it would bring to Davis? I know that's a big question. Sure, really three main things that we really emphasized that we really felt were in the fiber of this that we negotiated with the applicants. One is a large number of good, clean, green jobs. And in the time of COVID, we need to help with our economic recovery. This is one strategy. We've had a procession of companies that have outgrown Davis and left us and left our potential economic development behind the dust. And this project would change that. It provides 850 units of workforce housing, including 153 affordable housing units ranging from moderate income housing to extremely low income housing. And we really need the housing. Everyone has recognized that. The other thing it did is it brought us an environmentally friendly project that was gonna rely on 100% green energy. A lot of it, the energy generated on site through solar and then the deal written into the contracts was that they would purchase 100% clean energy from our valley clean energy, our local energy supplier. Nobody else in the country we believe has done anything like this. And of course, it turns out it's gonna be a close vote but we're still hopeful and we think this project has a lot of merit for our community. It's kind of a given in Davis that when a development is proposed there will be opposition. I mean, that's just the process. And I will say the no on B campaign was really out in force this season and came on strong in the last few weeks. Criticism of the measure centered on, from their perspective, environmental impacts, loss of ag land and fears that it was developers who would win and some of the fiscal benefits promised wouldn't be realized. So I guess for the yes side what's been the general tenor of the campaign and how have you responded to those kinds of criticisms? Well, for example, on some of those issues we pointed to an independent report that was done by a prominent land use economics expert. The developer had to pay their bills but it was under the control of the city to make sure there was independence and those findings were reviewed by our finance and budget commission and they found this thing was a financial winner for the city of Davis. The estimate was $5 million net to the city at build out a very significant impact in the context of the financial challenges we faced. We did everything we could to educate the public. Of course, we're limited in under COVID we couldn't go knocking on doors we didn't feel it was appropriate to do that but we did use social media we certainly used advertising in the newspaper. We used every means we could to telephone people and make the case to them. And I think we ran a really good campaign but there is a strong built-in opposition in this town to growth we understand the sensitivities there. We just tried to explain to folks that change is gonna happen in this community one way or the other and it's just we need to manage that change in a way that benefits all of us and keeps our community both riskily and environmentally sustainable. One last question on this before we move into wrapping our hour together because it's almost done. There was a really interesting dynamic over the last few weeks the waning days of the campaign both the Davis Chamber of Commerce and the Davis Downtown Business Association supported measure B but in recent weeks there's been a loose coalition of about 30 downtown businesses who have come out against it expressing concerns that it would pull business away from the core downtown and out to the periphery. So how did the yes campaign respond to that? Well, we certainly it's been a lot of time long in advance of that last bit of opposition explaining the project and working through the project with the business leaders of this community. And so you saw a huge list of people who understand the technology industry and the opportunities for the city of Davis but really this was the fruition of 20 years of planning. Our old general plan said, go study this because we need to take advantage of this opportunity to leverage our relationship with UC Davis. UC Davis now has $950 million a year and in contracts for research. This is money we would be leaving on the table if we don't approve that. We have bills to pay around here to fix things. And if we don't move forward on economic development it'd be way harder to meet our community's needs. Okay, Dan, I've just gotten a message that there are some results for the measures although I don't think we're at precinct reports yet but if they can get that up share their screen and just look at whatever is there and I'm just, there we go. Okay, so again, this is not with precincts reporting but it looks like at the moment the no vote is 52, it's very close. 52.05% and 47.95% is that. I'm looking at those numbers also. Yeah, yeah. So it's zero of 12 precincts reporting so that's probably early ballots. And just while we're here looks like Measure D is winning by a landslide and that's not really a surprise because that is related to the general plan and that's how we get to vote on issues like Measure B. Okay, I'm gonna thank you, crew for that and we're gonna come back where I want to just take a couple of minutes just to thank you and tell you what a pleasure it's been. You and I have always connected it's that former journalist thing and I appreciate both not only how hard you work on council but how accessible you've made yourself. You've been a frequent guest here at the MA. You never say no, you didn't think twice I think about coming on and sharing this evening. So I hope it's been a good experience for you. It is, I'm an old ingstained wretch back from the newspaper business and actually in those days I did a fair amount of TV and radio work in conjunction with my newspaper job. It was a way to spread the word about the newspaper. This has been really exciting and fun to do. I hope I asked some good questions tonight. I can feel the juices flowing a little bit on what I used to do for a living. But this is such a great value to our community to explore these issues in this way in a really safe environment where people can communicate real they're all gonna be respected. And the one thing I would just say about the numbers we just showed there are a lot of additional ballots still to be counted. So this is not even close to being over. And I think I would just echo what folks are talking about in the national level that before we start making calls we need to count every vote because every vote counts. It's gonna take a while. And we will all respect whatever the voters decide. All right, Dan Carson, thank you so much for participating in Election Night here at Davis Media Access. It's been a pleasure. Thank you for having me, goodnight. We are gonna put up a slide for just a minute or two. Let me take a sip of water and we'll be back with Brett Lee and just a minute. All right, we are back here. By the way, although we're doing this on Zoom I'm live and solo here in the DMA studio and my co-host are joining me by Zoom as well and our guests by Zoom as well. And we have a few staff members here who are socially distant and working in other parts of the building to bring you this show. So welcome back to our two of live Election Night here at Davis Media Access. And now on screen and joining us is Brett Lee, Davis City Council member who's wrapping up two terms. And we're gonna have a chance to reflect on his service on the council a little later in the hour. Brett, thanks so much for joining us. Oh, sure, thanks for having me, Autumn. I appreciate it. You look very official with your headset and your mic. I like it. It's like you're in your own newsroom there. Yeah, it's actually does a double duty. My son is doing remote learning. He's in sixth grade. So we share the audio headset setup. So yeah. Well, I'm gonna start by asking you to tell people what they're watching and help me with the top of the hour business here. Yeah, so you're watching live Election Night coverage from Davis Media Access, our nonprofit community media and technology center. This show wraps months of DMA's work providing voter education programming for racist spanning from school board to county offices to Congress. This airs, this show airs on DCTV, Channel 15 on the Comcast System in Davis as a live stream at davismedia.org slash election. You're also listening to this program live on K-Dirt, L-P, our Davis's own low power radio station at 95.7 FM in Davis, California. And we'd like to thank all the candidates and campaigns for participating in local election programming. As we'll note throughout the evening, local elections and down ballot races are extremely important in the life of our communities. Yet can often be lost in the shuffle during a high profile national election. And fortunately that doesn't happen here in Davis. It doesn't. Yeah. That's partially because we have council members willing to come and help host Election Night and because we have community media. What I want to add to that is that in a normal year, and you've been here during other years, Brett, this place is hopping, it's full of people, we have a large crew, we're in the studio and we have all this technology available to us. This whole season of election programming we've done has been accomplished by remote technology and a lot of wizardry behind the scenes on the part of DMA staff. I really need to thank tonight's director, Diane Dodoshka and also Alex Silva-Satter, Bryce Parker and Derek Service on our staff for making this happen. And thanks also to our staff, Jim Buchanan, Diane Kremley and Jeff Shaw. And gratitude to our board member and KDRT DJ Bill Wagman, who's in the KDRT booth tonight managing the live stream. And Brett, I'd like to thank you and my other co-host, Dan and Gloria. It's really not just any community where the mayor and two council members will join in for a night of local democracy and local media. I think it says a lot about the people who serve here and I think it says a lot about our community, really. So now what I want to tell you is that this work of voter education programming and live election night program focused on our local races represents hundreds and hundreds of hours of work on the part of DMA staff and volunteers over the last several months. And what we do all year round is we highlight local voices and perspectives. We lift up other nonprofits, help them get the word out. We highlight arts and cultures groups. We run public meetings. We're in the schools in normal times recording things. And the way that we highlight all this local stuff never feels more important to me than it does during an election season. So this is where you get to be proactive viewers and listeners. If you would go to davesmedia.org and click that donate link, this work that we do on elections is supported by the community and we can't do it without you. So thank you for giving us a look there tonight. All right, our first guest this evening and I haven't gotten any notice is going to be Jesse Salinas of elections, but he was really clear that he might be able to talk to us, he might not. So I'm not sure if that's gonna happen or not. If it doesn't, we just have a little conversation about Measure D. Okay, I'm getting the notice that Jesse's not here yet. We'll see if he joins us in a couple of minutes. But let's talk about Measure D for a minute. Dan and I looked at early results with no precincts in and it looks like it's gonna win by a landslide. It's over 80%. Tell us a little bit about Measure D and its importance in how we vote on things here in Davis, if you would. Yeah, so Measure D as in David is a continuation of Measure J, which was continued as Measure R. Essentially whenever the city wishes to annex land on the periphery and convert it from ag to some other use such as residential or commercial, it requires that the city, the community members of Davis have to weigh in, have the ability to vote yes or no on that annexation proposal. We've had a variety of votes that have come under sort of the Measure J, R, slash, and now Diaz and David measure. For a lot of folks, it's really referred to as Measure J. We had the first Coville village vote. We had a Wild Horse Ranch vote. We had Nishi One, Nishi Two, West Davis Act of Adult, and now the disc proposal. And there was no organized opposition to the renewal of this. And so it's not surprising that it's doing quite well. I think most people kind of like the idea of being able to control the size and shape of their community. There have been some detractors. It does create a fairly high bar for any development proposal because it not only has to sort of make its way through the city commissions, the city council and so it's a, the proposals tend to have to be something that catches the imagination of the public. So of all those votes that have gone before the people, there have only been two that have passed. So I guess that's doing my math correctly. We don't know what's going to happen with Measure B, but definitely Nishi One did not pass. Coville village did not pass and then also Wild Horse Ranch did not pass. And so the proponents of projects realized that they have a fairly tough road ahead of them because they'd have to really do a lot of outreach and have something to actually tell people. It's not just sending them a glossy brochure, but there has to be some substance as to why would a resident of Davis wish to expand the community? So it does look like it's going to pass, but I do want to ask the question if it doesn't or if it didn't, what would that mean if it didn't pass? So I would say in the absence of that ability, in order, let's imagine that a council comes and votes yes on a fairly large community changing proposal. It would require if the community wasn't in favor of it at some level, it would require some sort of referendum on that. And we've seen some citizen led referendums to undo some council actions in the past. But that's a very difficult thing. There's some time deadlines, there's a lot of signature gathering. And so the general consensus says, this is a good thing. Having said that, I would say it almost makes it impossible for a smaller development proposal to succeed because if you imagine, let's just say Autumn, you have a three acre parcel on the side of town and you want to turn it into a plant nursery with a little cottage and you really love Lord of the Rings and you wanted to build a little thing that looks kind of like a hobbit sort of home. You just couldn't do it because the filing fees, the idea of having to run a full citywide campaign, all these sorts of things make it very, very difficult for a smaller project to succeed under this umbrella. And so it sort of tilts everything towards a much larger development in order for it to be able to carry the cost of a full citywide campaign. That might be a little bit long-winded, but yeah, so I think that's what it does. Without having this ability, really the community is sort of left to the decisions of the city council. And the idea here is on these boundary of Davis decisions, these are fairly important decisions. And so having the community members have a direct say on that seems like a reasonable thing. Okay, thank you for that background. And I can't believe you knew about my plans to build a hobbit house on the periphery of town. That was a well guarded secret. We're gonna get ready to move in David Sandino for your first interview of the evening. And I got a chance to meet David, there he is, welcome. When he did his meet the candidate statement, and he was one of three candidates running for the Los Rios Community College Board of Trustees in area four. And so now the director is gonna drop me out for a minute and let you two gentlemen have a conversation about David's campaign. Okay, thank you, Adam. So hello, David, welcome. I imagine you've had a fairly busy last few months campaigning for the seat on the Los Rios district. That's an understatement. So it's been hectic trying to campaign in a remote environment and social media, I ran about over a decade ago for the Board of Supervisors pre COVID. And that was more personal. And I had a chance to do a lot more door to door and putting the table at a farmer's market. Can't do that now. So I tried some different things. The last month I've been doing what I did on weekends and Elk Grove and West Sacramento standing at corners of busy intersections and trying to get some attention that way. So yes, it's a different kind of campaign with this current pandemic. So I imagine that for a lot of folks, they may not know what community college district they're actually in. So I imagine that part of your conversation was around educating prospective voters. What types of things surprised you as you were talking to the voters whether properly social distance or at the resume or waving at them from the street corner? Well, I think one of the surprising things was that the community colleges, I believe, are underappreciated. It's especially in the town of Davis, UC Davis, I think takes most of the attention for higher education. And once I started talking to people about community colleges and they start appreciating the importance of it, start sharing stories, parents with kids that are at community college or folks that attend a community college. Then I start getting the story across a message across how important community colleges are. And the Los Rios Community Colleges are essential to this region. They provide actually something like billions of dollars to the economy. There's over 70,000 students that attend the four community college, essentially UC Davis doubled. So that's what I learned is that I think the community colleges are underappreciated. But once you start talking to people and they start hearing the stories, yes, it's making a big difference for Davis, Yolo County, Sacramento County. It's a big part of our educational services that it provides. And the district is fairly large. Did you notice any differences, say, the concerns from the folks you talked to in Davis versus, say, Elk Grove, things like that? You know, I think there is some differences. One thing about the Elk Grove area, there is a heavy desire to understand more about career education. That's true for Davis as well, to the folks I've talked to. But most of the parents and students, a lot of them are thinking of transfer education in the Elk Grove community, West Sacramento community. There's a lot of that, but there's also the folks that are interested in using community colleges as a vehicle to find jobs. Community colleges are a great way to go improve the status of folks to go from maybe finding work and be able to attain a job that can improve their own personal wealth. So that's what I've discovered. So for kind of, I'm sure Autumn will appreciate us trying to closely stick to a timeline. We have time for one more question, I think. So we talk about kind of interesting things you've discovered, maybe have a happy story. Like you, just this interaction with, as a result of you running for this position and you're just like, wow, that was really wonderful. I'm so glad I am doing this because of this experience. Well, the whole experience was uplifting for me. I enjoy people, I enjoy campaigning, I enjoy talking about higher education, but one story that I thought was especially touching for me, I was campaigning Elk Grove at a grocery store. I had a older gentleman that stopped by and liked what I was saying and said, you know what, I want you to introduce, want to introduce you to my family. And so I got a chance to talk to them about who I am and then try to understand what their interest was in community college. We'll make a long story short. His son also called me later and wanted to vet me as a candidate. So he asked a lot of questions and ultimately I think I may have earned his vote. So I thought that was great. I didn't know these folks. I didn't, you know, I just ran on to them based on what I was doing in the campaign. So I felt good about that. And I also appreciated their interest in democracy and trying to learn more about candidates. Yeah, well, that's great to hear. Would you like to thank because we're down to the end of our time together here? Well, thank you. Is there anyone on your campaign you'd like to say thank you to give a shout out? Absolutely. So I had about a dozen helpers, friends, colleagues with the person I would wish to thank the most is my wife, Georgina Valencia, who's active in the community and does great things on the Social Services Commission. She's been helpful with social media and financing and advertising. So she deserves a big thanks from me. Good. It's been a pleasure to meet you during the campaign. Thanks so much for joining us this evening and enjoy the rest of your night. Well, thank you. Okay, thank you. All right, next we are going to be we're going to be moving Brett out for just a couple of minutes and we'll see you. We're going to be moving in Linda Dios who's a candidate for the Yolo County Board of Supervisors District. Before there she is. Welcome, Linda. Oh, you made it. It's the end of the race. I know I can go to bed. So let me start by saying that the five members of the Yolo County Board of Supervisors are nonpartisan. They represent different areas of the county. They served for four years and this is a runoff campaign against incumbent Jim Provenza who has served three terms on the board and came in just shy of that 50% mark in March while there was a third candidate, David Abranson, who drew about 14%. So here you are. You had originally planned to run for Davis City Council and as I understand it, you looked at the supervisors one day and said, wow, they're all men and that should change. Tell us that story. Well, that's quite true. I was there with our mayor, Gloria Partida and it was like, we just kind of looked at each other and said, you know, we need you here. We need to shake things up here a bit and let's go for this race. And he said the gulp. Okay, let's do that. And I'm so proud of how I've been doing and have done and I don't know, we'll see how the numbers keep going this evening. But I mean, talk about raising issues and educating people about what the county is all about and what we can do for folks here in Yolo County specifically, just have never been talked about just because there's never been a race to discuss issues like affordable housing and criminal justice reform. What kind of green new deal can we do here? Things that really needed to have a robust discussion and we're able to do that knocking on doors and calling people and day by day. It's the biggest issue you heard. What did you bring forward the most? Because it was climate change. That really was the biggest issue I heard. I was out there during the smoky times, you know, hot days and truly climate change was huge. I mean, there's a sense of, oh my gosh, there's not a woman, we need a woman there. But that's not an issue per se except more going to equities kind of a voice for women. But as far as an issue beyond that, it's housing and green, we were calling it green new deal but what can we do here locally for the environment here in Yolo County? Sure. So yeah, in addition to the pandemic, and you're right, I saw you walk through my neighborhood on a day that was triple digits and smoky and I couldn't believe you were out there. You actually raised a lot more money than your opponent here during this race and you did something that most local candidates don't do which is you ran advertising commercials on local cable television. How did that go? It was fabulous. I mean, it was a lot of fun to make the video. And then, I mean, when I was getting calls and texts, I saw you on Monday night football. I mean, I never thought I'd be at Monday night football. So I saw you on the food channel, I saw you on CNN. Apparently I was the first ad after the last debate between Biden and the other guy. And so I was like, wow, and it really got name recognition out. I was down in South Davis and a little kid came out and said, can I get your autograph? I saw you on the TV and it was great. I mean, we had to see how it was gonna go and it came in cheaper than we thought and we thought, what the heck, let's go for it. It was very professionally done too. Thank you. So we're almost down to the end of our time. So I always like to give candidates a chance to thank those who helped them during the season. So who would you like to thank? Well, first of all, my wife, I mean, Eva's been my rock. She's just been fabulous. And then my core team of volunteers have just been fabulous. I mean, walking, texting, calling, I mean, they were just great for me. And they know who they are and I'll just leave it with that. But thank you to all of you and thank you to the voters. I mean, my goodness to come out like this, during the pandemic and vote in the numbers that you have here in Davis and in the county is a true testament to our local democracy here. Well, thank you for running. Thank you so much for joining us here tonight. I hope the rest of your evening goes well. It's too early for us to have a sense yet, but we'll, we're all waiting and we'll find out what happens. All right, take good care and thanks. Thank you. That was Linda Diaz running for Yellow County Board of Supervisors District 4 and Brett is back with me. Brett, I'm wondering if we shouldn't go to the county election site and just see what's percolating there. It is early in the evening and unfortunately we didn't get a chance. Okay, so there's an early vote. Again, this is without precincts reporting. So these are early ballots and that's too soon to predict how the night will go and how there's gonna be a lot of mail-in ballots. One of the questions I really wanted to ask Jesse Salinas, our Yellow County Assessor Clerk Elections guy, is how long did he think it would take all the votes to be added up? We had this, like everything else, COVID impacted our elections. We're all vote by mail this time, although you could walk it into a voter information center over the last couple of days. And of course the polls here just closed at eight o'clock. So I think that's all we're gonna get in terms of results. Before we get to our next interview, let me ask you, Brett, what's the relationship between Davis City Council members and county supervisors? How closely do you actually work together and or kind of on what points do you intersect? So I would say that we make an effort to have a good working relationship. We typically don't have many things that overlap, but they come up often enough that when they do, we need to be able to pick up the phone and typically it's actually by text. Hey, this is coming up. I'd like to talk to you about X, Y, and Z and then we're able to have a phone call and get things kind of rolling. Sometimes it's staff. The staff at the county will reach out to the city's staff and there'll be sort of a group meeting that is set up to kick off some area that we need to work together on. But a lot of times it's done at the individual council member and supervisor level. And so I would say on a monthly basis, we have some work related conversations and it's important that we're not strangers, right? So if you're only picking up the phone to talk to somebody when you need something from them, that's not a great way to develop a reciprocal relationship. So sometimes we'll see each other at events, say hello. Sometimes we'll reach out to them and say, hey, happy to reach out to folks in my neighborhood and tell them a little bit about the things you're working on. So very briefly, I can give you an example. The neighborhoods in Stonegate, they were having an issue with a farm that's adjacent to them. Back then there wasn't a 150 foot buffer between the homes and the farm. And so supervisor Saylor reached out to me and said, hey, let's hold a meeting at Stonegate Country Club, talk to the folks. And as a representative from the city, you can field some of the city related questions and do kind of follow-ups for them on that side and I'll help with the county angle. And so that's, things like that happen all the time. So it is important that we have a good working relationship with the supervisors. Good, I appreciate that insight into the inner workings of how the two bodies work together. We are getting ready to bring on our next candidate and it's going to be Colin Walsh, who was running in the newly created Davis City Council District 2. And so we're gonna move Colin in and we're gonna move Brett out and I'm gonna spend a few minutes talking to Colin about his candidacy, so and there he is. Hello Colin, welcome. Adam, how are you this evening? I'm well, thank you. And so thank you for joining us. So you ran in this newly created district and one of the questions I've been asking folks who haven't run for office before is, did the split into districts versus at large, was that a deciding factor and you deciding to, and you running and you going for it? To some extent, it wasn't the top deciding factor. The top factor was actually Brett who was the top vote-getter of all time deciding not to run, but knowing that the campaign would, that the decision was made fairly late in the game, knowing that it was a smaller area, definitely encouraged me to run because I felt that any campaign that I would run would be a grassroots campaign and that I would need to be in touch with as many voters as possible and walk door to door. And so having a smaller district, having a smaller area to cover made that seem more doable. Sure, sure. And we've been talking with everyone tonight too that the COVID pandemic sure made walking districts a lot harder and doing outreach. It made for a more challenging campaign, but as you were out there, what kinds of things were on the minds of district two voters? Well, I'd actually say that it made it challenging in unexpected ways that probably the biggest challenge was that people really wanted to talk. You know, when you come to the door and you're in a mask and you're standing back 10 to 15 feet, the people were happy to have you there and were possibly a little bored and lonely even. And so the conversations really went on and on and so it took a lot longer to do it. Top concerns, it varied slightly through the district. At the south end of the district, people were very upset about University Mall. At the north end of the district, people were very upset about the homeless camps along F Street. And there was a real perception of an increase in crime in that end of the district. Throughout the district though, concern for our downtown was a top concern. If elected, what's the first thing you'd be eager to tackle? Well, that's a good question. I think reform in our process a little bit so that our commissions have a better say when things go to the council. You know, there was a letter put into the council several months ago that I was a signer on that outlined some of those ideas. I think that having more voices heard and more respect paid to the commissions would be a real place to start. And when I say that, I mean that as not just, you know, commissioners, but it's a process where citizens can really engage. I mean, it's much easier to come and speak at commission meetings and give input at that stage in terms of proposals or projects. And so having a robust commission system isn't just about having the commissioners heard, it's about having the community heard. Right, so shifting gears a little bit. You have two kids. What did they think about dad running for office? What did they think? Well, you know, my daughter just wished me all the best. And just now a few moments ago before starting this, I think there was one awkward moment where her teacher said, oh, your dad's running for council. But, you know, overall it wasn't, they were happy for me, but not particularly fazed by it as well. So. Now you're modeling proactive civic engagement for them. So there's that, right? Absolutely. And actually my daughter has joined me down on, well, or maybe I should say it the other way around. I've joined my daughter in taking part in the climate strike, sometimes down at the corner of fifth and B. And she came to the council with us when we were asking for the burrowing owls to be taken into consideration. And that was, you know, it was great to have her and her friends involved. And so she's pretty anxious to be involved in things like saving the burrowing owls. And, you know. Those climate strikers are amazing. They've been out there every Friday and noon for the longest time now. Sometimes it's just one boy, Raul, but he, you know, someone is there Fridays and noon. It's impressive. All right, we're down to the end of our time. So who would you like to thank? Who aided and abetted you during your campaign? Oh, well, it's a long list of folks. I mean, I ran a really grassroots campaign. So there were so many people involved and it was, it's hard to name all of them quickly because the campaign team itself had, you know, 12 different folks involved on the calls weekly. But I guess I'd also like to thank the past mayors that came forward and supported me. Bill Copper, Mike Corbett, Jerry Adler, Ken Wagstaff. Oh gosh, I need to have the list in front of me because there's so many, because there's six of them. That's okay, you can just thank them all. Yeah. Having their support really meant a lot to me because they're people who I've watched over many years and so seeing them, you know, come and back me, you know, after seeing, you know, Mike Corbett who built Village Homes and has done so much good work like the Barry Bridge Project supporting me. It's just fantastic. Or, you know, Bill Copper or Ken who was my neighbor growing up too. And I remember, you know, 20 years ago working on literature for Ken or Sue Greenwald. I helped Sue with her campaign as well 20 years ago. So having it come back around and have them support me is really pretty amazing. All right, thank you so much for joining me here tonight. I'm gonna move on to, we have Roberta Milstein coming up next actually to talk about No On Measure B. And I know you've been involved in that campaign as well. All the best to you. Enjoy the rest of your evening and thanks so much for joining us. Yeah, thank you and good luck with all your interviews tonight, Autumn. It's really amazing what you're undertaking tonight. Thank you. All right, take care, Colin. Bye-bye. Okay, again, that was Colin Walsh who's running for the newly created district two counsel seat. And now we're gonna be moving in Roberta Milstein. And there she is. Hi Roberta, good to see you. Hi Autumn, good to see you too. All right. So I did the Yes On B campaign earlier and I read the whole resolution. I'm not gonna go through that again. I think we're all pretty clear that it's a mixed use development proposal. This has been a really interesting race. Let me start with what seemed to be the biggest issue for the No Campaign. And that was environmental impacts from traffic gridlock to CO2 emissions. From the No perspective, what did Measure B get wrong? Well, I think so you start out as 200 acres of prime farmland and also habitat for species like Brogne Owl. So if you're going to put a project on land that that's valuable, it had better be a very environmentally sensitive project but it wasn't or it isn't, the proposal isn't. You know, 5,600 parking spaces, estimated 24,000 additional car trips per day. And they tried to pitch it as green jobs but how can you have green jobs under those circumstances? So it just seemed as though, you know, it wasn't, it's not a good trade-off for, you know, to lose the farmland, to lose the habitat and then have this not green project that is environmentally harmful that would significantly contribute to Davis's climate change impact. One of the other concerns was about developer profits. Can you address that concern? Sure, yeah. I think if I understand what you're asking, there were promises that money would come to the city, that this would be beneficial for the city and that we needed this project. And when we looked at those estimates, we realized that they were based on some very unrealistic assumptions about what sorts of rents would be coming in, right? When you compare them to rents that sort of similar properties were getting in the region, they're much higher. So, you know, they're promising all this money to come into the city, but it seems highly unlikely. And even on the finance and budget commission, many of the commissioners were very skeptical of those estimates. So, you know, again, if you're gonna put a project on such valuable land, then you wanna return for it, but just doesn't seem like it would bring that kind of return. Okay. Finally, the no campaign focused on a lot of the unknowns as negatives found both the financial benefits and the need for that much office space given COVID questionable and called the project too big. So I guess my last question for you is, is there anywhere such a development might be acceptable in Davis? Development is, I said this earlier in the evening, it's always gonna be contested in Davis. So what would good development look like? Well, I think there's definitely an opportunity for dispersed development in Davis. And there's an op-ed going around, which I couldn't list you all the properties, but there's a number of vacant properties in Davis already. And so it doesn't seem like there's necessarily a reason to have them all be located on the outskirts of the city, they could be dispersed throughout the city and still fulfill the same need to still support Davis's commercial needs and business needs. More infill projects. Yeah, more infill projects, exactly. Okay. Well, I wanna thank you for making time. And is there anything else you wanna add before I move you out and move in our next guest? Sure. Yeah, I just wanna thank everyone who worked on this. It was really a group effort and we kept a really sustained energy throughout and did some great op-eds and literature, I think. And so that was really fun. And then to really see all the letters to the editor come out and so we'll see how the vote turns out, but I'm cautiously optimistic based on the early return, so. Yeah, looks like it's gonna be a close race. Yeah, it does look like a close one. So I don't wanna say, I don't wanna get... Sure. We've got a ways to go yet. So thank you so much for joining us. Thank you for having me. All right, take care. All right, that was Roberta Milstein representing the No on Measure B or No on Disc Campaign. And we're gonna move Roberta out, there she goes. And we're gonna be moving Connor Gorman in. I got to talk with Connor earlier in the campaign. He is running for the Davis City Council and the newly created District Five. Hello, Connor, welcome. All right, thanks for doing this. You bet. And Brett's gonna interview you and I'm gonna dip off for just a minute. So I'll let you two gentlemen chat. So welcome, Connor. It's nice to have a two-way conversation with you. Often Connor will attend the Davis City Council meetings and make public comment, but it's for those of you familiar with public comment, it's sort of the public commenter makes their comments and we're fairly constrained in terms of our ability to respond back to specific comments. But welcome tonight, Connor. How do you think the election, what did you most enjoy about the election? It must have been kind of a different experience for you. Yeah, it was definitely different than my usual political organizing because I am more familiar with labor organizing and direct action tactics, but it was definitely an informative experience. And I think that it really gave me a sense of the insider perspective of running for office. And I think it also helped put out some perspectives that some people in the Davis community may not have heard before. So I hope that it helps move the conversation in that way. And so the typical campaign season without COVID would involve a canvassing, a booth at the farmer's market, things like that. How did you sort of navigate the whole COVID pandemic while trying to get out and meet the voters and tell them about your views on things and why they should vote for you? So we did do a bit of canvassing as I believe a lot of the candidates did because we have heard that with a mask and socially distanced it is safe, but we specifically got door hangers instead of other types of literature so that if people were not comfortable answering their door we could leave the door hanger fairly easily. And we also did a bit of phone banking and a lot of social media ads. And I think social media ads this year were seemed to be more prominent than in the past. So it seems like that's something that a lot of candidates turned to this year more than they have in previous elections. So when I first campaigned I had in my mind kind of what I thought the most important issue was. And then I was quickly found out that I had no idea and it was actually something quite different. Did you have that experience where you thought, I'm gonna go to talk to these people and I know they're gonna wanna talk about this one thing and then you were, what did you discover? Did you anticipate correctly or were you surprised? A bit of both I would say. So I will say that my district has a lot of different communities and they have different needs and different primary issues. But one issue that I did not anticipate coming up as much as it did was the South Davis Library. And that is an important project that I'm glad was brought to my attention. And I hope that's something that's continued to be discussed because I think that would benefit all of district five and would very much benefit some of the most marginalized communities while also benefiting the community as a whole. So I think that would be a good project for a number of reasons. And then traffic did come up and that's one that I did anticipate in my district. But that came up a lot. And then with like student and renter voters as well as the homeless community, there were things around public safety and housing which I also generally anticipated. So I would say the library is the big one that I did not realize was so prominent. Okay. Well, for our sort of final question here, it's not really a question. It's really just an opportunity for you to say thank you to anybody who you wanna thank whether it's volunteers or you know, people who helped you with your campaign. Here's a chance to say thank you. Yeah. So first I wanna thank my campaign manager Jordan Barney who was very helpful in a lot of ways, editing things, coordinating things, doing various administrative tasks and also helping me prepare for forums and all of those types of things. Then my treasurer Hershey was also very involved in the campaign. And then I also wanna thank various other volunteers. Lucas helped me design a lot of flyers and graphics and the door hanger but also other people who did canvassing or did phone banking and all of those types of things. And then I would also like to thank organizationally the Young Democratic Socialist of America at UC Davis, the YOLO DSA and UC AFT which represents lectures and librarians in the UC system. Those are all organizations that were part of my campaign and that I hope my campaign could be mutually beneficial for where they help the campaign but I also hope the campaign helps grow those organizations and build their power as well. Well, thank you for coming in Connor. We really appreciate it and good luck with your race in district five. We'll be bringing Autumn back in and we'll be joined with our next guest, Joe Denunzio. So welcome back Autumn. All right, thank you. And thanks Connor. It was good to cross paths with you. Wish you all the best and enjoy the rest of your evening. And thanks. And as Brett said, we are gonna be bringing in Joe Denunzio who is president of the Davis Joint Unified Board of Trustees. Joe is not running for office's time but I asked him to join us because there he is. Hey, Joe. Autumn gave you Brett. His voice is an important one and he also has a very, very difficult task at this moment in time as we know, perhaps nowhere has been more deeply impacted during the pandemic than schools and how our children are taught. So, and in addition to that, Cindy Pickett, who was president of the board took a job in Chicago and we have two trustees who decided not to run for a next term. So a lot of changes. What's your hope for those who are gonna join the board this time around? And what are they walking into? Well, that's a great question, Autumn. I think that, you know, first off, you really have to be dedicated and motivated to run for office. And so, you know, I'm confident, however the election turns out, we're gonna have three new trustees that are gonna put the students, the teachers and staff's interests first are gonna be thoughtful advocates for every student in our district. And, you know, ultimately they've all established themselves as strong members of our community are gonna be able to listen to and react to feedback from the community. I mean, I think the big, not surprising issues that we're grappling with right now, the first you already mentioned, you know, the COVID-19 pandemic, how it's impacted, how we teach our students, how we find and navigate a safer turn to school, safe with our students, our teachers and staff. That is, you know, dominating our conversations at the board every other week. And certainly, you know, in our off-week conversations with the superintendent. I think second is the budget. And, you know, we've all kind of tucked that away for now. And the reality is, is that the governor will release his budget in January 15th. And it's my expectation, there are gonna be some real challenges there for school districts across the state of California. And so we're gonna have to grapple with that and how we manage it in a district that runs very tight and very lean and has a very small reserve margin. So it may create some real challenges for us. And then there are many other things that you would normally be expecting to deal with. We have a, you know, great effort going in a task force looking at ethnic studies. We have an ambitious facilities plan, implementing new programs on every campus. You know, we've implemented a new CTE program. There's lots of things that in a normal year you would really be focusing on. They're still happening, but they're really overshadowed by those two big issues. So elected official to elected official Brett, what would you like to ask Joe? Yeah, Joe. So obviously when you joined the school board there were already sort of challenges but add in the wild card of COVID which then results in the state tax revenues dramatically plunging in there. Therefore that sort of carry a domino effect onto the school district. Tell me about something that you've discovered about the school district that's made you smile and like made you really proud. So you're running for school board, you know, you win a seat in an election and now you kind of know the nuts and bolts and you discover something and you're like, wow, I never knew that, you know. What an interesting question, right? So I'm gonna give you two answers. I'm gonna give you one that is just not a surprise to you because we've had this conversation before, you're a bit of a budget wonk and I have really enjoyed getting into the minutia of the local and state budgeting process to understand it. You know, I come from a private industry background, I think I'm reasonably well versed in both large company and small company finance. Understanding school finance has really been helpful in being able to see how our budget reflects our community's priorities. And so I know it's a little nerdy, but that's been really fun for me. I think the second and probably more important thing is the recognition that we have such a tremendous group of teachers and staff in service of our community and our students. And I've met quite a few, you know, before I was seated, but I've met quite a few more and have been able to see the impact they have on our students and the level of energy and enthusiasm. And then, candidly, I got to work alongside them in the process of getting Measure G passed. And I'm not supposed to say that's a surprise, but it's just a really positive reinforcement. There's so many people willing to dedicate their careers on their energy to the education of the next generation. And as we've talked, I think there's no greater responsibility for our generation than to give educational opportunities to each and every child in our community. And so that would be the most important thing to me, Brett. That was a great question, Brett. It was. Unfortunately, our time is up, Joe. We need to move on to our next candidate, but you always make yourself very available when we ask for interviews and ask for your time and you give up it very freely. So thank you for that. And for all the work you do in our community. Thank you for everything you and Davis Media Access is doing on them. Brett, always a pleasure to see you. Have a great evening. All right, too. Thanks so much, Joe. Okay, and joining us next, our final candidate for the evening is someone I think Brett knows, and that is Will Arnold. He currently sits on the city council. Okay, he currently sits in a field of sunflowers. Thank you for joining us, Will. Have you met Brett? Yeah, I've met Brett. I know that, dude. So this has been an interesting election there. At first, you weren't going to run and then you decided to run. So let me recap just a little bit. You were elected in 2016. So one of the questions I wanna ask you is because you've run in both an at large and now a district election. What's the big difference there? What was your experience like? Well, a district is certainly more manageable from a voter outreach standpoint. I was able to, along with my volunteers, walk the entire district with literature. We did knock on doors, but we dropped off literature at the entire district twice. I personally called every landline. I texted every cell phone. We were able to mail to the district twice because it's only one fifth of the city. A district is more manageable. I've run, as you know, big campaigns, not just citywide campaigns, but campaigns in this assembly district that we're in. Those numbers are so daunting. The numbers of folks that you need to reach out to in a district is manageable. And so you have a real opportunity to talk to anyone in your district who's willing to pick up the phone or chat. Yeah. So, Brett, what did you want to ask? Yeah, so, well, so here you are, writing for your second term in district two, which includes my neighborhood. What, and so, it's a pretty similar question that I've asked some other folks. What sort of surprised you? I mean, so, you know, you're on the council. You're in touch with, you know, you're community members and so, but when you go door to door and kind of do this outreach, you know, sometimes you get surprised. Anything jump out at you in terms of an issue that's come up? Well, you're right that 2020 has been such a unique election for so many reasons. The districts is a major one, also switching to November for the city is a big difference. And then, of course, this election is one like none other in the midst of a surging pandemic and with such a critical national election happening concurrently, that's not typical for our city council races, which before had happened in June or other primary months in normal years that weren't 2020. And so I've been really focused on the national election when I talked to voters in district two. There were a lot of folks who were really focused on the national election. And, you know, of course, I hope we can restore decorum decency and competence to the White House. But to be honest, no matter what happens tonight in this big election national election, there's a lot of work to do even under the best circumstances for local municipality decisions made, Brett, as you know, at the federal level impact our community very directly. Climate change, specifically, our community is invested in agricultural and we rely on water. You and I serve currently, and we're well for another month on the joint water project, the JPA. Drought is such a serious concern. Fire is a serious concern in the way that the federal government handles those issues and the way the federal government handled COVID created a lack of cohesion. It created some chaos for folks. That was what voters were telling me when I was talking to them on the phone. For us, that's resulted in losses, both personal and economic damage to our community and instability. And these are issues that will persist beyond tonight and directly affect the folks in Davis. And I talked to so many people who said, you know, I haven't really even been paying attention to the city council because there's so much going on nationally. Now, I take that as half a compliment because it's sort of like, well, maybe it in part is because, you know, we're doing some good things when our national government is going off the rails. And so, but these are issues that, you know, that will be with us as a city, no matter what happens to that federal level, we're gonna face facts. We're gonna have to rely on science for how crazy it is that I have to say that. And we're gonna have to lead the way that we've done before when we faced adversity before, but I believe we can do it again. My campaign slogan was resilience in the face of challenge. And I think we're gonna have to continue to show that as a community. And that's what I signed up for for a second term. Well, thanks for joining us. We're out of time. We're running just a little bit behind, but who would you like to thank before we shoo you off? Well, thank you for asking. Obviously, I got to thank my wife, Nicole. This wouldn't have happened without her support and help and my kids. Nobody would have believed me if I said it during the election, but the thing that really pushed me through in this election was when my daughter lost a tooth and she got some money from the tooth fairy and she woke me up that morning and said, Will, I know how you can win your election. And she gave me her tooth fairy. So, Sonia is the MVP, but then I also want to shout out, we had a lot of volunteers reaching out to voters, but I need to shout out Dave Griffin, my good friend. When we, he did not, he dropped lit at least, I think, 4,000 total doors, which is pretty, I think that's basically the entire district one time over in terms of households. So, Dave Griffin, you're a rock star. All right, thanks so much, Will. All the best to you. Thank you, Brett. Hopefully I got your vote. I had your endorsement. Hopefully I got your vote, Brett. Oh, wait. When's the election? We haven't got an election, buddy. Come on, man. It's too late to drop it in the mailbox tomorrow. Enjoy the rest of your evening, Will, and all the best. Thank you, you too. Cheers. You too. All right, Brett, I'm gonna turn the table on you. We have just a few minutes left together, believe it or not, the hour is gone. You decided not to run. You served two terms. You were our mayor. You've been totally engaged with the community for the last eight years. What comes next for you? So my friends are a little bit annoyed at me when I mentioned this, but I plan to have some evenings free and catch up on Netflix and things like that. So being on the city council involves not only attending the council meetings, which typically start at 5.30 for closed session and then open session goes 6.32, call it 11. But I'm gonna liaise on to three different city commissions. So that's, so let's see. I guess it was last night. I was on the open space and habitat commission meeting and that went 6.30 to 9.30. And so, Adam, there are a couple of those commission meetings in per week. And as Will mentioned, we're both serving on the Woodland Davis Clean Water Agency Board of Directors. So we add in all those things and it just sort of absorbs a lot of free time. And so I'm kind of looking forward to just sitting on a sofa and watching a movie and just not feeling like I have to check my watch to see what the next appointment is. Oh, you mean parenting a boy and a dog as you do? Yeah, actually, I don't know about the three rescue dogs at this point. Oh my goodness, so gay. Yeah, well, I was a two, but I came across a dog unfortunately was going to be euthanized unless adopted. And so I couldn't resist. So you're a good soul. Well, I want to thank you so much. It's been really fun to share this hour with you. I also want to thank you. You know, same thing I've said to the other council members, we have really unparalleled access to our elected officials here. We, you know, when I asked you to come in and do an interview, you come in and you talk about the issues of the day. And I think that has given our community a very different flavor. So thank you for all you've done. Thank you for your service. Well, I do want to say that you and your team are very professional. And so it's not just that we make ourselves available. It's you run a very good operation there. And you know, one of the downsides of doing this by Zoom is I don't get to say hi to people in person because you have a good behind the camera sort of staff that does a lot of things. And so it's noticed and appreciated by us. So thank you, Autumn. Thank you so much. And we'll get you in here for a bit more of a reflection at some point, I promise. Sure. All right. Bye. Move you on out. Thank you. And we're going to cut to the slide for just a minute. And we will be back with Mayor Gloria Partita. All right, I am thrilled to have joining me this hour. And we're headed into the final stretch of our live election night show. And joining me is Davis Mayor Gloria Partita. Welcome to you. For having me. This is a great opportunity to be part of this process, which I am a big fan of. And I'm also a big fan of Davis Media Access and the work that everyone here does as formerly mentioned. This is a great operation. Everyone is very professional and equitable and really the service that you do to the community is just so needed. And we're very grateful to have you and Davis. Thank you so much. We're very grateful for the community and the Council's support over the years, too. I'm going to pitch to you and ask you to read our top of the hour business. And then we'll move into our interviews and our hour together. Sure. OK. You are watching live election night coverage from Davis Media Access, our nonprofit community media and technology center. This show wraps months of DMA's work providing voter education programming for racist spanning from school board to county offices to Congress. This show airs on DCTV channel 15 on the Comcast station in Davis. As a live stream at davismedia.org forward slash election, you are also listening to this program live on KDRT LP 95.7 FM in Davis, California. We'd like to thank all the candidates and campaigns for participating in local election programming. As we'll note throughout the evening, local elections and down ballot races are extremely important in the life of our communities. Yet can be lost in the shuffle during a high profile national election. That doesn't happen here in Davis. It doesn't. And that has a lot to do with all the folks coming on here tonight. It does have a lot to do with having local and accessible media. I want to say that during a normal election season, we would have had access to our studio here and all the technology that that yields. We would have had a full night of people here. Instead, everything's been done remotely. And I really need to give a big tip of the hat to our technical staff who's made all of this possible. Directing tonight is Diane Dodoschka, our studio manager. And she's helped by Alex Silva-Satter, Bryce Parker, and Derek Service. I'd also like to thank our other staff members, Jim Buchanan, Diane Kremley, and Jeff Shaw for their support over the last couple of months. And finally, gratitude to Bill Wagman. Bill is both a member of the DMA Board of Directors and a KDRT DJ, one of the folk brothers, Wednesday mornings at 10 AM. And he is manning the KDRT stream tonight. Our staff at DMA has spent hundreds upon hundreds of hours counting the primary in March in the last couple of months doing voter education programming and working on this program. All year round, we're here helping other nonprofits, arts and culture organizations, the schools, elected officials get word out about what is happening in our community. And this election work in particular is a labor of love. It takes real resources, all that staff time I mentioned. And I'm going to ask you, dear viewers and listeners, to give us a little love back tonight with a donation in any amount at davismedia.org slash donate. Or you can just go to the website and click the donate button. This is really fundamentally community-supported work. And we can't do it without your help. So thank you for that. I have gotten a message that our first guest is not with us yet. That's going to be Jim Provenza. And I know he was running from one thing to the next. So let's give him a couple of minutes, Gloria, and see if he gets there. In the meantime, let's talk about you for a couple of minutes. Much has been made of this, but I do believe it's representation matters and it is worth mentioning. You are our community's first Latinx mayor. And so I want to ask you what it's been like for you to wear that mantle and that responsibility as you learn how to be an elected official. So I think that it definitely is a lens that gives me a lot of perspective about identity. And I know that identity politics is, on the national level, has been very controversial. But the way that it helps me is that I not only look at typical minority voices, be that Latinx or LGBT or what most people think about when they think about minority voices, I also think about like our community. We have a lot of people who are older in our community who are maybe a little more conservative. And you often hear that their voices aren't heard in our very progressive in the liberal town. And so it does remind me that we have to consider everyone in our community. And so I think that that's what it has been like for me. And I've also been very cognizant of making sure that I take the opportunity to push forward issues that have historically not been considered in the city. So today I spoke to a group of third graders and they're so adorable. And I'm trying to explain to them about government and how things run. And this question actually came up from a bunch of third graders. And I said, well, I said, everyone is different. We were talking about racism actually. Everyone is different. And you like the friends that you have because they are different than you. You need to, you know, there are things about your friends that you see that are different. And sometimes those things are the things that you see. I said, and some people have dogs and some people have cats and some people have two moms and some people have people who are disabled and their family. And if you were, you know, trying to make decisions and you had someone who didn't have a dog, that person might not think the dog parks are important. So it's about representation. Yeah. Hey, Gloria, it looks like Jim is with us. So I'm gonna ask Diane to go ahead and move Jim in. This is Jim Provenza. He's the incumbent on the Yolo County Board of Supervisors in the fourth district. Hello, Jim and welcome. Hi, how are you? I'm good, thank you. I know you're running from one place to the next tonight. So glad you can be here. Happy to be here. Yeah. So how has this campaign been for you? I imagine you maybe didn't expect to find yourself in a runoff, but here you are. So tell us a little bit about this campaign season for you. Well, it was a much longer campaign than anyone could expect because, you know, the March primary was several months earlier than a primary normally would be in June. So the length of the campaign with the runoff was about a year and four months total in the campaign which is a long time for a local election. So that was, and after the March primary, we had of course the COVID-19 crisis and months going by before the November election. So that was unusual as well. So it was very different from the typical local election. Gloria, did you wanna chime in with the question? Yeah, yeah. How are you doing, Jim? Yeah, how are you doing, Jim? It sounds like you've been running around, I bet. Yeah, things have been going well and I did get to talk to a lot of voters. In the primary, I went door to door through most of the district and we made the decision in the general election though not to knock on doors. We felt that we could risk the health of the people we're talking to or I would risk spreading the virus to my own 98 year old mother-in-law. So we made the decision even with masks not to go door to door and instead to communicate by phone. And to me, that's more difficult. I enjoyed talking to everybody and learned a lot but speaking face to face, shaking someone's hand, going up to the door, that's what I really enjoy. I didn't get to do it this time in the general election. So that was an unusual aspect of it. On the other hand, I did talk to a lot of voters and became familiar with a lot of issues. That I'd say one thing I learned is that the voters don't care whose job it is to do a particular thing. They just want things done. For example, affordable housing in Davis is largely a city responsibility but they want the county involved in it too. They want the problem solved. And so much of the time people will call the county or the city and they'll be told, oh, that's the city job or that's the county's job. And people don't want to hear that. They want to hear that we're working together to solve problems. And whether it's the homelessness or affordable housing, there's a lot of things we can do to work together. And there's some things we exclusively do and something in the city exclusively does but there's a lot of overlap. And I think we could work together on homelessness and affordable housing for example and accomplish a lot together. So you mentioned a little bit about how different it was to a campaign in the middle of a pandemic. And I know the pandemic has consumed the counties, a lot of the county's time and resources and added to that there was a lot of conversations around the Black Lives Matter movement and calls to reimagine public safety. That movement really gained inroads with the mainstream. How has it personally impacted the work at the county for you? Well, the pandemic first of all, definitely impacted the work of the county and that I know I was working seven days a week on it because we were getting so many urgent calls from constituents whether it was farm workers threatened with the loss of their housing or somebody who's lost their job and what needed to be connected with resources or a local business closing. All of those things were happening at the same time and our staff was all engaged with the COVID-19 crisis which means they weren't engaged with other things they would normally be doing. And then we were focused and as vice chair, there was a committee of the chair and vice chair that worked largely on COVID-19 issues. So it made it hard to do everything at one time, probably my most busy difficult time. And I'd say much of the year, this is really before I started active campaigning, I was just, I was working seven days a week, sometimes 12 hours a day just on these things. And then to kind of try to campaign at the same time, it was an unusual challenge. Yeah, and then in terms of the criminal justice issues, those are things I'd been working on all along. I've been working to establish alternatives to incarceration, various programs like having mental health workers go out on calls, having supporting the neighborhood courts and the mental health courts, day reporting center as an alternative to incarceration. I was part of working on these things. So it wasn't that big of a leap to continue that effort when it became more in the public eye. It in some ways focused people more. I think the general population is much more focused on these issues. And I hope they continue to be focused. Jim, I do apologize. We have to move on to the next candidate, but thank you so much for joining us and for all your service on the Board of Supervisors. And I imagine I'll be talking to you in the near future. I hope so. Have a good rest of your evening. Look forward to it. Nice talking to you as well, Gloria. All right, thank you. Good to see you. Nice to see you too. All right, our thanks to Jim Provenza. And we're gonna be moving in our next candidate who's Larry Gunther, who's also running for the newly created Davis City Council District Three. Welcome, Larry. Welcome, thank you all. Good to see you. And you did something really interesting. I saw this on your Facebook. You rode your bike to go can't or to go talk to voters in your district, but you used your skateboard because you said that riding the skateboard was four times faster than riding the bike or walking. And I thought that was a really interesting way to get out the vote. Yeah. So two years ago when I ran, a friend was helping me canvas. He said, man, we can do this a better way. And so you carry a number of door hangers with you and you got a clock. So yeah, four times as many doors per hour with a skateboard. And it's just that without reducing the time talking to voters, which was great. Yeah, and it's more fun. So you mentioned you ran in 2018 and of course that was an at large election and here we have district elections. How did that feel? What was the difference for you? How did that feel different? I mean, the biggest difference is that I was one of nine candidates, Mayor Partee that will commiserate with me. I think in that, and it was difficult to kind of get a voice out. And so having the field narrowed in this district to two, I think was better for talking about issues and just for not overwhelming people. Right. I think one of the most interesting things for me that you talked about in the campaign was the fact that you believe the council should really pull from its own expertise on commissions before looking to outside consultants. Can you tell us how you, what led you to that conclusion? Just looking, I mean, so being involved in the city, we have finance and budget commission is a great example. So in the discussion about the disc project, a bunch of questions were brought up. And obviously it's easier for me to get to know commissioners than consultants because the commissioners live in Davis and I talked to them. But looking at the resumes and the experience of our commissioners and looking at the experience of kind of consultants in the same field, it's like, wow, if these two people were competing for the job, we'd hire the commissioners because they just, you know, they have at least as good often better experience. Plus, of course, they live in the community and they're doing it for free. The outcome matters very much to them and they're not, you know, they're obviously not in it for a buck because they're not even getting a buck, right? Right. So. Yeah. All right, last question is one of the major thrust of your campaign was around public safety and in particular, how we manage policing here in Davis. What would you like to see changed? Yeah, there are a lot of things I would like to see change. And I would really, I'm really, really thankful to Yellow People Power for really bringing this front and center for doing recent work with numbers. So this is a real place where policy, evidence-based policy needs to take the front. We've got a lot of numbers now. It took some time to get that data but we've got Davis Police Department data and that's really showing us that things may be somewhat different in Davis. They're fairly different in Davis, but there are some consistent issues that Davis has throughout, that are throughout the rest of the country. And so really bringing the focus off of, you know, militarization and getting community-based policing, community courts, that kind of thing. I often think I say the word community too many times and then I wonder, can you really say it's correct? I'm in the same boat. I use it all the time. But I think just the biggest problem is that it's a 200, well, 100 year old at least system. And it's like a fish trying to think, well, how would I live without water? It's so different that I think we really, really need to have this deep dialogue in the community. And I think the charrettes that we had for the downtown plan are a great model for that. Like, let's let every idea get out there. We don't say no to any idea upfront, right? We listen to everyone, look at it. Is that possible? Can we do that? And I think not just saying, is it possible? But can we do that? Right, right. We need to wrap unfortunately, but who would you like to thank before I take you off screen? First, last, and always my wife, she has stood by me when this has been, as she says, single channel TV for many, many months. And so many people on my campaign, it's really hard to pick and choose. But I really wanna pull out, Jesse Salinas and everybody at Yolo County elections, it has never been more important that we trust our elections and knowing that crew as well as I do and knowing that I can go to bed tonight and I'm not worried about the vote. Right. Or the counting of the vote, the recording of the vote. That is locked up. I will second that. And I think you're joining us and I'm sorry to rush you off, but we are running a little bit late. No problem. All the best to you, enjoy the rest of your evening and I'll talk to you soon. All right, thank you, Anna. Okay, thank you, Larry. All right, coming in next, there's our mayor again, coming in next is Josh Chapman. Josh is a candidate and there he is. Hi Josh. Sorry we're running. Good, I'm sorry we're running a little bit late, but that is par for the course with these election night shows. You just finished your run for a seat on the Davis city council and the newly created district five. You're another candidate who's been super heavily involved with commission and civic engagement. And I'm really wondering, what was the issue that tipped you from thinking about running to running? Yeah, thank you. I appreciate you having a song this evening. And before I jump into that, I wanna take some time and thank some folks. My wife, Athena, who has been my campaign manager from the get go. My two boys owning Quinton, who are 11 and nine, who have been beside me helping out canvassing. They've been at Margaret Montgomery the past four days with me from sunup to sundown, talking to voters. And I couldn't have done it without their support. My kind of other campaign manager, Dan almost has been with me since day one. And I can't thank them enough for their support through this. It's been an amazing three months. I've learned a ton. And it's great to be here this evening and see some of the results come in and take a step back and have this opportunity to talk with you guys. So again, thank you for having us on this evening. I know you have a late night as well, just like all of us. Yeah, I hear that. So talking to people in district five, what's on their minds? What kind of things did they share with you about their concerns? I know I see Maya Martinez here. She's on the call or she's on the screen to how it's working live. But yeah, starting out, there were two major issues. Actually, there were three. Mace Boulevard was one of the biggest concerns in the very beginning. There was a large cluster of folks who had a lot of concerns around Pacifico. And then it's interesting the last month of this campaign, both of those issues definitely were in the background and Measure B was the biggest question and concern that I was talking with folks about. So across the board, those were the three issues that resoundingly were, I was talking with voters about. And then also, I think in South Davis, there has been a feeling that folks have felt here and experienced in their own lives that South Davis has not had somebody on city council said since Ted Pentillo really, that stepped up and had a voice for this community. And I think that our council in general that has done a really great job doing that work across the board, but that sentiment has always been in the conversations with the folks that I've had. So that would be definitely another factor that played into this campaign and how we talk to and reach voters. All right, last question for you tonight as the owner of Armadillo Music and great store, by the way. And former chair of the Downtown Davis Business Association, what's your biggest concern for businesses in our downtown core right now? Yeah, I think what we've done right now, what the city has done, I definitely commend them on the flexibility that we've seen with temporary use permits, the ability for businesses to really be creative and cut out the bureaucracy around, working around permits and what that looks like. And we've seen our downtown transform in the past three or four months with all the outdoor dining and all the outdoor activity that's really allowed some of these businesses to thrive through this pandemic and really be creative in order to make ends meet. And I think that's something that we're gonna continue to, we will need to do. I think a huge part of what's coming up is really pushing forward and finalizing the downtown plan. We need more people living, working, shopping, eating downtown. We need infill, we need people down there. We need to look at baking pieces of property, identify that and get a project in the pipelines that we have more people that are down there supporting our downtown businesses. It's gonna be a huge thing that this next council is gonna have to really put forward. And I think it's one of the priorities of whoever is elected this evening will really need to take that on and I would encourage them, whether it's me or somebody else to really tackle that. All right, well, thank you so much for joining us here tonight. Thank you for stepping up and running. It takes a lot of courage to do that and my hat's off to all the candidates who put themselves out there that way. So all the best to you and enjoy the rest of your evening, Josh. Thanks so much, guys. Have a great night. Thank you. Take care. Folks, we were gonna take a quick look at results but we're gonna push that towards the end of the evening when we bring Lucas Ferricks on. We have our next guest here and Gloria is gonna interview her. Hello, Cecilia Escamilla Greenwald. Nice to see you. I am going to duck off for a minute and let you two wonderful women have a conversation. Thank you, Anna. Hello, Mayor Partida. Hi, Gloria. Hello, hello. I tried to catch you on your Zoom a little while ago but I was late. I hope that you had some good conversations. Very good conversations. It was nice to have a lot of people join and be able to thank people for their support, their encouragement, their contributions, their volunteerism. As you know, in campaigns, it's really a neat opportunity to get out there and hear people's ideas, hear people's voices and meet people, reconnect with people you may have not talked to since the pandemic happened and also meet new people. It's really exciting, it's an exciting time. Right. So how did this campaigning go for you? I feel so blessed, so fortunate. It went really, really well. It was very challenging, I imagine, with having to do this during the COVID. Yeah, very challenging with the pandemic during COVID. I have a background in working on campaigns. I mean, years ago, I worked on the Kerry Edwards campaign and I went to St. Louis. I was the volunteer coordinator there and I've worked on many other campaigns. I happened to meet my husband on a state senatorial campaign. It's always exciting to meet people and something that's very, it was very odd having to distance and having to do everything via Zoom and the forums, you know, usually you attend or you participate in forums in person. So having to do that on Zoom, it's quite an experience. My kids said to me, Mommy, now you know how we feel when we're in class for several hours a day. So, yes, now we know. It's really tough. So the two schools that are in your district are very different in demographics. Did you find that it was challenging to sort of find a way that you would be able to hear both of those voices and to sort of bridge the needs of those two communities? It is challenging, it is. I did have one kid that some years ago attended Pioneer Elementary School and it's a wonderful school. They're very, they have really good teachers, very good aides, principals and very good, they're very committed to arts, music, science. And, you know, it's a school that have parents that are very involved and that's wonderful. Then we have Marguerite Montgomery that they have more parents that are more, I guess you could say, working class background and the lot of ELL students, so the needs are a little different, but I tell you, we have parents that are so committed and so involved and we've had principals and aides that just give so much of their heart and their time. And I think, you know, there's a history between the two and, you know, I still remain hopeful. I'm down so far by about 105 points, 105 votes, sorry, at the last count, but I still remain hopeful, you know, we've got to have hope. And regardless of what the outcome is, I will still continue to be involved. I've had teachers and parents reach out to me. There's the children are distance learning right now. And we have the children of farm workers who have not had computers, the computers they have, they have not been able to connect. They then resorted to having kids work in the fields. So instead of getting an education and be a distance learning, they are suffering and they are at a loss of education. That is not okay. It is not okay at all regardless of where you live in the city. And I'm going to address that, whether I'm elected or not, because we cannot let the little brown children, the Mexican children be lost in the system because somebody's not paying attention to that. So it's a priority of mine, not just for them, but for all children. I want to make sure that teachers, children and parents have the resources they need while we are distance learning. So thank you for that question because it's very important. We cannot forget about a group of students that I'm committed to paying attention to that and making it happen. Well, it's good to hear that you will continue to be that advocate regardless of the outcome here. Yeah, thank you. And I'm also very committed to, and I've already started the work on working with the fire department to establish a summer program for them so that high school students can attend and get training for firefighting and they can do that over the years. Then when they graduate, they can pursue a career in firefighting. I committed to that. And I've already started to work on getting that set up. Thank you so much for joining us. We are out of time and have to bid you goodnight. Thank you for that. Thank you, I want to thank everybody and thank you both. Good night. Good night. Thanks for joining us. All right, we're going to be, that was Cecilia Eskemia Greenwald. And joining us next is Dylan Horton. And there's Dylan, hello and welcome. Dylan is the third candidate running for, let's see. I'm losing district two. I'm losing, it's late in the evening and I'm losing sight of my districts. I'm going to step off for a minute and let the mayor interview you. Good to see you. Good to see you, Autumn. Hey Dylan, how are you holding up this evening? I'm holding up all right. I had a Zoom, I guess, similar to my colleague, Cecilia earlier this evening, got a chance to chat with and touch base and thank supporters, which was good. Had a chance to, as I talked with some of the folks on live stream earlier today, I had a chance to talk with my great-grandmother, which is always a good thing for me to do when I need to sort of ground myself in what's going on in a place in time. My great-grandmother's 95, sort of grew up picking cotton to support the family in Central Texas. And she was just talking to me about driving up her ballot to one of the polling stations in Dallas last week. Anyway, it was, I'm used to being worn down by the end of October and even numbered years. So tired, but used to it. So Dylan, you've had the distinction of running probably the longest campaign of any candidate. What do you have? Yes, can you talk about that experience a little bit? What have you learned? Well, you know, I know my- You've been involved for a long time. Indeed, yeah, but I know my campaign experience definitely across the districts, I think is somewhat unique in that I, you know, I started so long ago, I started pre-pandemic. I was one of the few Davis City Council candidates to, you know, have meet and greets across the city. I was glad that you attended one of them. I, you know, I was at the farmer's market, you know, when the, when the free speech space was open for candidates to be there. I don't think any other Davis City Council candidate this cycle has been able to experience that, you know, this has been a really long campaign. And I think I've really gotten a chance to, more than I expected, learn more about the community and what I would like to do to better serve it. So can you talk a little bit about what you will continue to do going forward? So yeah, I've been, you know, in the space of activism and advocacy, for, you know, communities that I'm a part of, for the better part of the last decade, since before I was eligible to vote, this is sort of, you know, I tell people, these are my only marketable skills. And so you will see me one way or the other in these same spaces, fighting for the causes and advancing the issues that I'm passionate about and believe, you know, would take our community on a better path toward a more inclusive and accessible future for people. And you are the chair of the police accountability commission, which is relatively new for our city, but it's really important right now in the climate that we are experiencing. Do you? Yeah, no, I feel really privileged to have been on the commission and it's initial two years, definitely to serve as its second chair. And definitely in this time, I sort of talked to people sometimes about how fortunate I feel just to be in this place in time, not just as a candidate, but definitely in the role on the commission being able to, you know, utilize my lived experiences and experiences on the commission in service to this city. I think that's a valuable bit of work for me to be a part of just as an individual. And I think those experiences and voices are valuable to have at the table when we're having those discussions about public safety and how we design services in the city of Davis. Do you think that that was an issue that resonated with people as you were speaking to them? I know you spoke to people mostly before this issue came up when you were a farmers market. Yeah, no, but I've had so many, I was sort of, you know, lit dropping in North Davis, you know, I guess about a month ago or so, and a woman came up to me and said, I've only seen a deal important from a distance, but I think that might be you. I mean, if that is you, I've sort of been to some of the events that you've been a part of and I really have been, you know, glad to and uplifted to sort of be a part of that and sort of have a path to myself participate in what we can do to make effective changes in the community. So I think people have really heard, I think what we need to do and how they can be a part of it. And I think that's, like I said, a beneficial thing, I think for me to be a part of this as a person to have that positive forward moving effect on what's going on here. We are running out of time. This is what you get for 22 interviews, three hours. I do want to say though, when I talked to you a couple of months ago when we did meet the candidates, I also said that you had the distinction of being the candidate who had run the longest campaign ever, I think in history. So congratulations on your longevity and a campaign run there and everything you do in the community. Who would you like to thank before we move you off screen? I would just like to thank so many of the people that helped us knock on doors, particularly Luana and Emmy who helped us do so much in this campaign. All right, thank you so much for running and thank you for joining us and enjoy the rest of your evening, all the best to you. Thank you, goodbye. Take care. That was Dylan Horton running for Davis City Council in the newly created district two. And speaking of newly created districts, we have coming up here, Rachelle Swanson, there she is. Welcome, Rachelle. Hey, good evening. I'm the same, we have the same scars. Here's the funny thing, I almost wore mine so we would have been triplets but y'all get to be twins. Goodness supporting women businesses. That's right, those are from the wardrobe just so you know. So you are different in this race. First of all, you've served two terms on Council. I think most people know that. You stepped away for a while to take a break and work on some other life and family issues. And you told me, I asked you earlier in the season why you ran. You said it wasn't a single issue. You mentioned a couple of things but you really said that people weren't talking about South Davis. So my question is, are they talking now? You know, they are to a degree. You know, I don't think as much as I would hope to. I think we're still focused on a couple issues. You know, and I think, you know, some of them, I mean, certainly there's the MACE issue which is, you know, clearly by the numbers demonstrates that, you know, it doesn't matter that I was already off Council when it was built. You know, that was very successful to be able to kind of pin that on me. You know, and so that's been the issue. What really concerns me about South Davis is that's one area. That's really not the bigger issues. We have a lot of equity issues here, a lot of social justice issues. If you look at the numbers, you know, especially like so on the city website, you can look and you can see where DPD has a lot of activity. It's in South Davis. You look at where we are for lack of services for our most vulnerable folks. Those are there. And I just, I haven't seen that as much as I would like to. You know, I know like Pacifico is coming up on the 17th on the Council agenda. I would hope that that could be held until the fifth district representative is actually seated. But I completely respect, you know, wherever the council tends to go on that, you know. So I am hopeful, you know, what I really appreciate is seeing the level engagement from the district by voters on these issues. So I've talked to so many different people. I mean, it's COVID, right? I've done my, the mailers, we text bank, we phone bank and you know, traffic continues to be a big issue. And I think that's the one thing. And that's, I think what's interesting is what I've really seen even in this election is the folks who are engaged versus those who are not. So like I said, there's a lot of focus on the traffic piece and not necessarily on all the other additional issues that are there, you know. But I really, I do hope that we'll see some improvements. I so applaud the council and this last session really focusing on roads and streets and the pavement index. And I hope that does include some traffic calming measures that can actually help in South Davis. You know, we get heavily impacted here by ways, you know. And I know right now it doesn't seem like it's that much of a crisis, but all you have to do is, you know, get on 80, say from Dixon to Davis. It's still in the afternoon, 3-3-30 in the afternoon, it's backed up just like it was pre-COVID. So I think those are important things that are going to be there. I do have faith that the fact that we have district elections means more people are going to be engaged. I think what's really going to matter though, whether or not we see an appreciable difference is going to come down to whether or not we see some depth in that representation in South Davis. It's one thing to have one council member and there's been a lot of focus, which kind of surprised me how much the downtown focus had such an impact even in the South Davis race because, you know, there's always been a heavily focus on downtown. And I think in this, I think it's reflected too like Measure B and others, we still have this belief that our only source of revenue and business is in the downtown, which don't get me wrong, the downtown is so important. I've been a business owner down there. I think it is our gems, but that's such a one-sided piece of it. So that's what I'm hopeful for, you know, when you talk about the district piece is if we're really going to see change and we're going to see reflection for South Davis, there's going to have to be some depth in the bench on the commissions as well as just a council seat. Gloria, I think we have time for one more question, quick question. Sure, sure. So you would be coming into this with experience. What's one area where you believe your experience could really make a difference? The piece when it comes to the budget and how you really focus on what do you look at revenues versus outlays? And that revenue piece being multifaceted, there's a lot of movement that's happening at the regional level, as well as the state level and the federal level. And one thing where I see we haven't been as engaged and as I promised you, Gloria, is every time I see an opportunity for Davis, I'm still going to share it with you as where we can look at a bigger piece because there is an infrastructure bill that is coming from the feds. And I was on a webinar recently and they made sure to say it's not your father's infrastructure bill. So there's some opportunities there for communities that are ready to be engaged. And I think we certainly can qualify for that. So on the dais, off the dais. I love Davis, I did what I said I was gonna do. I had community members approach me. They wanted my experience on the dais. I did my part and I think the voters, they're gonna do their part for what they feel is right, completely respect the outcome. No matter how it ends up falling out and it's just, it's been so great. There's so many wonderful people. As always, that's the beauty of a campaign. You know, the new friends you meet, the ones that you've reconnected with, even in COVID, it's really, it's just been lovely. All right, we've got to wrap up but it's great to see you. Thanks for stepping up and running again. It was a surprise to me at first but then it seemed natural. There's Rochelle, she's running for office. I do want to give one second if I can. I wanna really thank all my big campaign team as well as all the volunteers. I'm sure they all got tired of me saying, we go high, we go high. But I love, especially for the young women that were involved and others that have a chance to see that running for office isn't about the win. It's about the brace and about the progress and all the things that you learn along the way. And yeah, it's been wonderful. So thank you all and thank you always for doing this. Thank you so much, Rochelle. We'll see you down the road. Take care. All right, take care. All right, and we're gonna say goodbye to Rochelle. That was for district five, city council. And Gloria, our next to last guest is with us. It's Kelly Wilkerson. Kelly, welcome. And Kelly was running for the issues, the third candidate running or one of three candidates running for the Los Rios Community College Board of Trustees area four. That's a mouthful. Well, now this was your first run for public office to have that, right? Yeah, it was. How has the campaign been? It's been about a month and a half since I talked with you. Well, it's a really large district. There's 150,000 voters in two counties, three cities. And I think maybe I had a little bit of an advantage as a first time candidate because I didn't quite realize why I was getting into it, I think. And really happy with a really large group of volunteers who I had an all volunteer campaign who mastered everything from creating a phone bank to creating a text bank to social media and just did a really amazing job. And so I don't know what campaignings like pre-COVID so maybe that was a good thing. But no, it was a great experience. I have always helped other folks sometimes in their campaigns but never wanted to do it myself. Part of the reason is I'm not very good at small talk and glad handing, that's not really my style at all. But one of the things that really surprised me about campaigning is that it's not small talk. You're really talking to people about things that really matter. And you're doing problem solving, you're really listening to the needs of the community and really hoping that I'll have that opportunity to help. Gloria, you know a few things about that, right? Yes, yes. So Kelly, I guess my question is what drew you to this particular race? You know, I had always just not really thought that I was gonna be running for office. I thought I had a behind the scenes thing. And Don Saylor had actually posted publicly on Facebook that a community college trustee position was open and that no one from Yolo County had been on it for at least 20 years. And it just clicked in my brain that I'm a high school teacher who teaches both kind of college bound work and also what used to be called vocational ed. And I also spent before I became a teacher 10 years working for community college groups and just traveled the state, finding programs that worked, programs that didn't work, talking with faculty, understanding the issues, working on the budget. And so those two things were in my head that this was an area where I thought I had something unique to bring to the position and then COVID hit. And so I kind of stopped. I sort of paused for a month to kind of figure out my own family. I think we all did, right? And then the more I learned, the more I realized that the community colleges were really gonna be at the center of our recovery and not just our economic recovery but our educational recovery. There's so many students, my former students who are at home, they didn't go off to college. There's in our own remote learning, there's people who are not succeeding who are gonna have to rebuild their educational lives and then our economy as well. And so I'm really convinced it's a critical position and at the center of so many solutions we can have for our community. I think that that is so true. I know that during the last recession, there was a big boom to community colleges from people that had fallen out of the workforce and needed to reinvent themselves and took that sort of downtime to go back to community colleges and it was really helpful in helping people reenter and to find success. And I also think that in Davis, we don't think too much about the percentage of kids who go to community college because it's a really small percentage of the population that actually makes it into the four-year colleges. Well, even more so, their kids don't all finish college. I think that my wake-up call was, we have, we followed students and six years after high school graduation, only half of them had graduated from college. So the obvious question is, how are those other 50% doing? Do they have a path towards success? Do they have a plan to a job that feeds a family? And so I'm really hoping to change the conversation in Davis in particular, but throughout the district that every high school senior needs a plan. We can't just say it's college end of story. We're about out of time. I hate to cut you off. I wanna say too quick thanks to you. Thank you for training up journalists. I say that from the bottom of my heart as a once-in-future journalist. I don't know, I seem to find myself in the role again these days. And also I went to community college and graduated from UC Davis and I have to go to community college. So it is very, very important. Thank you for running. Thank you for joining us. All the best to you. Thank you. All right. Gloria, believe it or not, we're at the almost at the end of our hour. We're bringing on your vice mayor. You did a really good job, Autumn. My God, you moved people along. You're taking the time keeper at our classmates. I need more things to do, you know. Training us now is Lucas Frerichs. Lucas has served two terms on the council. He currently serves as vice mayor. So he and Gloria talk a lot, I'm guessing. Lucas is also a former member of the board of directors here at Davis Media Access. So I have known him for a long time. So district elections, Lucas, you've run at large. I mean, is it hard to tell how different a district election was in the middle of a pandemic? What's your experience been? Well, first of all, thank you so much for the opportunity to join this evening. I always appreciate all that certainly that Davis Media Access does in the community, but especially the elections coverage. So thank you. I mean, doing all the elections work that you all do just in a normal year is a sort of herculean effort, but especially doing all of this in a COVID year, really appreciate all your efforts and all the crew and everybody at DMA. So thank you for that. So yeah, this year, I mean, campaigning in a district, I was talking to someone earlier this evening. It's interesting. I think it's only one fifth of the city. So just in terms of the geography and the nature of the numbers, it's smaller. And so that actually I think was helpful because it's actually, you're able to reach all parts of the district in fairly easy order. I'm a big walker. I'm out walking the dog several times a day and just that's one of my major ways I like to get around town. And so walking in the neighborhoods in and around where I live as part of my district or a district that it was easy and it was a lot of fun. So I was able to sort of combine both tasks at the same time. Gloria, what would you like to ask your vice mayor? So what has been your biggest lesson learned on council? Ooh, that's a really good question. It is because I'm really curious about this sort of a newbie council person because I'd like to learn about what sorts of things I should be on the lookout for. I think there's a couple of things I would say. So I mean, because it's changed over time since I've been on now for eight years. When I was first on the council the first couple of years I had thought I was pretty well prepared to be on the city council based on serving on the social services commission and the planning commission before serving on the city council. So I was like, oh yeah, I got a good sense of what happens when you're on the city council. But then joining the council, I really was exposed to as we all are the sort of the breadth of responsibilities that being on the council sort of contains including serving on all the other intergovernmental boards and agencies that we all serve on. And so I didn't really have a sense of that. And so that was just such an eye-opening sort of part of serving on the council. I think the other thing that's, I don't know that it's a lesson per se, but I would just say that now after having served on the council for eight years, I just continue to be super appreciative of how engaged the community is. This community consistently it just is always well-prepared, shows up for any sort of issue, large or small, I mean, it's just, whether it's a real community need, right? We've seen these disastrous wildfires over the course of the past couple of years in Northern California, just the engagement, the level of community engagement is something that is, I really marvel at. I think it's a real hallmark of this community. And on the fire note, the three of us, that's kind of how we all first, not first connected, but we connect it working on fire relief benefits together. Before we get to the next question, we're down to about four minutes in the show and I hear we have some results. So let me go ahead and have the crew bring those in and see what we're looking at. This is from the Yolo Elections website. And I have to squint to see this, but we're looking at, okay, these are two of two precincts reporting in district two and it looks like Will Arnold has a big lead there. Three of four precincts. It's looking good for you, Lucas. You are way ahead with 75% of the precincts reporting. And if we could scroll down, Alex, we've got city council district five there. And oh, that's with four out of four precincts reporting. Looks like Josh Chapman has a big lead there. Now again, we're talking about results where people walked in today, people mailed in ballots. We're not gonna know final results for a while. Is there anything down at the end of that screen we need to look at? Or was that, that was all the city council? Okay, measure B and measure D. Okay, it looks like measure B has about a 5% margin and measure D is winning by a landslide. So that's kind of a look at where we are with city things for tonight. All right, let's go back to Lucas and Gloria because we are actually down to the last couple of minutes of our time together here. So let me get Gloria to get one last question in with Lucas and then we're gonna sign off. Oh, we need to bring Lucas back in there. We need to bring Lucas back. So yeah, moving forward, what are your top two priorities going forward? Ooh, top two priorities. Well, I think short-term, I mean, this is probably the top priority for all of us. It's just getting us sort of, rebounding from COVID, right? Sort of continuing to have a recovery from our local economy and such, certainly. But I think I'll just say, so that's obviously something that's a short-term, but hopefully it'll be short-term. Hopefully it won't be a long-term priority. But I think that the other item that I really am interested in working on over the course of the next couple of years for me personally is just a neighborhood engagement and neighborhood outreach and really trying to strengthen the neighborhoods. I think that that's something I would really like to see the city sort of put some energy and effort towards sort of engagement. It's sort of communications wrapped up in that too, certainly, but really helping to strengthen our neighborhoods. And I think that there's a lot of already strong neighborhood associations and lots of diverse neighborhoods already, but I think that the city can actually play a role in continuing to make that even better and strengthen that in the years ahead. So I'm looking forward to really sort of taking that on. Yeah, I think the communication is something that is really important for us. Absolutely, yeah. No, I agree. Across the board. I wanna thank you both. Gloria for spending this hour with me. It's been really fun and insightful. Lucas, I've said this to all the council members, but for always making yourself available and accessible and being really, you talk about community engagement, but we have a highly engaged council here who's, you say yes a lot, so thank you for that. All right, and I wanna give one last shout out to the staff who served as crew in this remote time of COVID alone here in the studio, which is such a weird thing on election night, I can't tell you. I wanna give one last request for the community to really support this election work. It is community supported. We get a lot of support for KDRT. We don't always get a lot of support on the election side and this is a resource intensive effort, davismedia.org slash donate or davismedia.org. There's a donate button there. Thank you both for your time. Lucas, thanks for running again for all you do for the community. Wish you all the best and I hope the rest of your evening goes well. Thanks so much. I'm gonna sign off live from the DMA studio. This is Autumn Lab A Renaud and you've been watching local live election night coverage here at Davis Media Access. Thanks so much for tuning in. Thank you. Thank you.