 Okay. Good afternoon and welcome to the League of voters Davis. Davis city council. District three candidates form. Thanks to all the candidates for participating in our form. This form is also sponsored by the Davis media access. Davis media access is the nonprofit community media center serving Yolo County. Davis city council. The mission is to enrich and strengthen the community by providing alternatives to commercial media for local voices, opinions, and creative endeavors. My name is Mary Joe Brian and I'm president of the Davis League of Women voters. As many of you know, both the city of Davis and the Davis joint unified school district have moved from at large elections, to the school board trustees to district elections where we vote for a candidate who lives in the district where we live. The city of Davis map. On the screen. Shows the city council district three. The district includes central Davis. As well as parts of North Davis. Above Covel. Bounded basically by Catalina in the West. Our moderator for today. Today's forum is coma Hawk. Coma is one of the four board members of our chapter. And is our director of social media marketing. And an active member of the healthcare committee. You might also run into it. Trader Joe's. If you're there early enough. Anyway, we're thank you. And we look forward to a good. Candidate's forum. Thank you. Good afternoon, everyone. My name is Como Hawk. And I will serve as a moderator for this afternoon's forum. Here is the forum format. Each candidate will give a two minute opening statement. And after the opening statements, candle candidates. Respond up to six moderated questions. Three of these questions were sent to the candidates a week before the forum. Each candidate has 90 seconds for their first response to each question. Candidates will be advised of their time with a 15 second. Yellow card warning by the timekeeper. And a five second warning. A red card from a forum to I'm keeper. And a bell when their time has ended. Candidates will be muted if they exceed the time limit. Candidates, please mute your audio when you are not speaking. We have determined the order of the candidates by a random number drawing prior to this afternoon. Candidates have been advised of their order of speaking. After the primary question responses are completed by all candidates. I will ask if any candidate wants to add a secondary response. Candidates will each have five opportunities during the forum for secondary responses. A 40 second. If there are no additional candidate responses, I will go on to the next question. Candidates should indicate they would, if they would like to make a secondary response by just raising their hands. And I will call on them in the order they raise their hands. After all candidates have had a chance to add a secondary response. I will ask if any candidate would like to add a secondary response. I will ask if any candidate would like to add an additional response and then move on to the next question when no candidate wishes to respond further. At the conclusion of the moderated questions and responses, each candidate will have one minute for a closing statement. We will disable the chat feature at the bottom of the zoom screen at the beginning of the main part of the forum and enable it again when the main forum is concluded to minimize any disruption to the candidates. Audience members, please, you may submit your questions for consideration by sending questions to ask.LWVDA at gmail.com. Again, it's ASK, period. LWVDA at gmail.com. As you can see on the screen that our host has just put up. The questions will be accepted until 4 p.m. and the questions should be aimed at all candidates. Questions that are aimed at all candidates. Questions that are aimed at a single candidate will not be accepted. The audience questions will be asked in the final 30 minutes of our forum. Similar questions also asked will be grouped together just so we can maximize on the number of topics. There will be a short break between the end of the main forum and the audience Q&A to give the forum question managers an opportunity to collate the questions. Our chapter president Mary Jo Brian will provide the answers to the questions. We will close the audience questions where candidate responses will be limited to one minute and a secondary response of 30 seconds will be allowed for each candidate per question. Each candidate will now give their opening statement of up to two minutes. By random draw we begin with Larry Gunther. We will now move on to the next question. The next question is from the legal women voters. The respite center and the bright night deal of budget hearings and every major development project all show that there is I think a lack of real community engagement in our city process. I use the bright night deal as an example of what I mean. The bright night deal is a recent long-term solar leasing agreement made by the city at the time of the election. The city council voted against the bright night deal and I thanked him for his vote. It is an example of an attitude in city leadership that commission engagement is a burden instead of a path to better outcomes. Our city council meetings have hours of public comment with deep divisions over every major issue. Our community is getting more divided because I believe our process is flawed. We need to make sure that real community engagement produces better solutions. We can't separate a product from the process. We have public input but I don't see the city really engaging our community to create better solutions. Problems, we had an eight million dollar deficit before the pandemic and it is much worse now. We need to engage our business community and our community. We need to be creative and innovative. We have declared a climate emergency yet we haven't updated our climate action plan. City council says they support community broadband but they vote against it. Council says they support police accountability commission but they vote against almost every recommendation. The status quo in my mind is not working. I think the issue of community broadband is not working. The situation always comes from the community and it is leadership's job to foster a culture of community engagement and a learning government. In short, I am running for council to do things with our community not to our community. Thank you. Thank you, Larry. We will hear an opening statement from the City Council. Thank you so much, everyone. I appreciate the legal voters area for hosting this candidate's forum today. Almost overnight, COVID-19 has drastically changed our world. As a community, we have stepped up like we so often have before, basing our decisions on facts, science and compassion. I am so honored that this is the community I have been working with. I think it is going to be important for our council members to engage with regional partners both for efficiency and as well as our community remains an active part of any regional planning efforts and to strengthen our economy and keep our people safe. I have been leading in this regard already. It has been a joy and a priority to listen to our community concerns, connect people to the appropriate city staff and help solve problems. I think now more than ever we need leadership that has the experience to advocate and address the challenges facing us ahead. I love working on behalf of you. We do face some difficult questions. How do we preserve the social nature of Davis community while also being smart in facing the future? How do we innovate with practical policies? How do we address COVID-19 and intersect with our commitment to address climate change? This is the first election where city of Davis is going to vote by district and I'm running for district three and I'm honored to be able to put myself forward again to work on and help finish some of the work I have started over the past eight years. I look forward to the rest of our conversation today. Thanks so much. Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for your reiterated questions. With that, Lucas, you are scheduled to go first and then it'll be Larry and we'll just alternate because luckily we only have two candidates in this. It makes it really easy on me. So the first question and I can repeat the question. If you'd like each time. top needs or issues of your district and how do you propose to address them? Great, well, thanks so much for that question. I think there's a couple of items that sort of right off the top, right off the bat. One, even though we're going to be elected by district does not mean that I will only work on issues facing the district. So for example, one of the boundary lines of district three is Oak Avenue. If the neighbors on Oak Avenue come forward with a problem, I'm not going to only work on addressing the neighbors on Elk Avenue that are happening to be in my district as an example. So that's very first and foremost, working across boundaries and then of course, to throw out the best interests for the entire city. One of the top priorities that I have in this coming year, not even in the coming years, just this coming year is to actually create a new city staff position that years ago the city had that is a neighborhood liaison position that was lost during the Great Recession. And that position is needed now more than ever. There needs to be more proactive communication from the city, especially engaging with neighbors and neighborhoods. I'd like to see, there's a number of neighborhoods that don't have an official neighborhood association, but I think that I'd like to see the city go back to helping create additional neighborhood associations. And then for district three specifically, there are a lot of issues regarding aging infrastructure that I think need to be addressed. So neighborhood traffic calming is an issue of course, filling of course street repair and things of that nature, but also I'd like to see us do some park improvements as well because the central part of the city has less park facilities than some of the rest of the city. Thanks. Thank you. Larry, same question, I will repeat it. Although the city council will continue to govern all of Davis, you're being elected by voters of a specific district or the top needs slash issues of your district and how do you propose to address them? Thanks. A lot of the issues in our district are city-wide issues. And Lucas mentioned some of those, the infrastructure, road repair, bike repair, bike lane, bike path repair, and parks throughout the city, but there are some parts in district three that need some attention and are in fact getting some now. Davis Manor neighborhood has worked very well and very hard at trying to get updates to there. Park and getting neighborhood associations throughout the city I think is really important. I mean, I think that is, that's where this innovation, that's where the engagement starts is at the local level with your neighbors and then going up from there. I think the respite center is also a big issue in our district, in district three, the new daily respite center. We've got, well, I hope we have numbers on assessing those. So I haven't seen those. There was supposed to be a kind of a community steering committee that hasn't really been activated. And so using numbers to assess whether that's working or not and really refining how to make it work better. Thank you. I don't see any secondary responses. I just wanted to remind you both that you have five secondary responses for the moderated questions, which are 60 seconds each. Moving forward, Larry, you will have the next question. Second question is, what is your position on reallocating public safety police funding in Davis? And please include some specific examples. So yeah, like almost everybody, I believe that we need to reallocate a large portion of our current police budget. So Davis police statistics put together from police data by People Power show that about 13% of our crimes are crimes against people. And over time, the police have been charged with doing many jobs they are not trained or equipped to do. This isn't their fault. It isn't the community's fault really. It's just kind of the way we get these one-off calls. They get called out pretty soon. They're in charge of it. In many cases, the presence of an armed or an uniformed officer is not helpful or sometimes even harmful to a good outcome. And examples include trafficking accidents or calls to homeless, suspicious person calls. And in municipalities where unarmed responders are dispatched, armed officers are requested in a very small fraction of calls. We currently have a very reactive system that is based on catching criminals and punishing them. We need to move toward a more community-based system. With community court and even community policing, I believe. But we need to stay focused. The discussion of public safety often focuses on removing these social services and policy changes. But the nationwide events that sparked these discussions and that led to Davis forming its Police Accountability Commission are actually issues of practice, not of policy. And we need to really reimagine our public safety system, not just rename it. Thank you, Larry. Luca's same question. What is your position on reallocating public safety, police funding in Davis, and also please include specific examples? Great, thanks so much, appreciate that. So I think first and foremost, we need to continue to make strategic investments in public safety. I'd like to see more of a model like the Kahootz program, which is in operation up in Eugene, Oregon to help take on the mental health calls. But we're in a process of evaluating that currently and what more we can be doing. But in the meantime, the city council has strategically invested in the Davis Police Department's budget over the past several years. Some of the ways we've moved away from hiring additional sworn officers, meaning those with guns versus hiring additional non-sworn community specialists include that the past three Davis Police Department hires have all been non-sworn, aka no guns personnel. In 2017-18, we hired the homeless outreach coordinator who was non-sworn with the PD to address the needs of unsheltered individuals in Davis to assist in managing the homeless respite center. In 2019, we hired a new police services specialist, also non-sworn, to provide even further support for homeless outreach and services based on the success of the first position. Last year, we added one time funding for recruitment of officers to, excuse me, recruitment efforts to continue to expand diversity in the police department. This year, the city council funded a position for the only new position of city staff in the entire city for mental health crisis intervention services. And so the city is partnering with Yolo County to provide trained clinical staff with law enforcement response to a situation involving a person in mental health crisis. These increases in the police budget are meant to assist in reducing negative police interactions in Davis, and they aid the city in continuing to find ways to reach out to our marginalized communities. I recognize that much more is needed. There you go. Thank you. I'm sorry, Lucas, yes. I see a secondary response from Larry. Lucas, you can do a secondary response as well. Thanks. So some specific things I think I'm not, I think we've spent a lot of money on surveillance equipment and I am not, it's a huge fan of surveillance equipment. I think we could actually, we could absolutely be super duper safe if everybody was surveilled all the time, but I'm not a fan of going that route. Also, I know the city council denied the MRAP, but we kind of got an MRAP, the Amazon armored vehicle. And I think while that's useful and certainly has been used, a higher and better use for those funds could certainly have been found in my opinion. I don't see any more secondary responses. Yes, Lucas, yeah, go ahead. Sure, yeah, happy to. So my apologies for the last one. So I was just gonna say, I recognize that more is needed and I'm committed to working on these changes. We're gonna continue to look at best practices for us to emulate such as the CAHOODS program in Eugene, Oregon. And I think we're gonna also probably continue to partner with other local agencies like Yolo County and some of the surrounding cities as well. So that's the response. Thank you. I don't see any more secondary responses to that. So we will move on to the next question. Lucas, this question is going back to you. What more can the city do to curtail climate change? Great, thanks so much. Well, I think first thing and perhaps the most important action is to vote for a change in the federal administration and everyone's gonna be getting their ballots here in the next few days. I think those folks are primarily climate change deniers and so having a partnership with the federal government is gonna be critical to local efforts. An update of the city's Climate Action Plan is underway right now like being led by the Natural Resources Commission but more locally, I think the next big area for us as a state is transportation. The biggest source of greenhouse gas emissions is from the transportation sector and we need to of course reduce single occupancy vehicle trips and replace them with walking, biking and transit use but we're also gonna need a full scale movement towards electrification of the transportation sector. And so as a founding board member of Valley Clean Energy I've been working on this already and we're working on the first phase of electrify Yolo which is going to be installing numerous electric vehicle chargers throughout Davis and across Yolo County and of the $3 million grant Davis is receiving $2 million of that. And so I think that that is gonna be pretty important for us to work on. I also think we should consider additional local power generation. There's several ways to do this community owned or via Valley Clean Energy but also I think a locally produced solar farm but let's do it right with community engagement input and via a competitive in process unlike the sham bright night approval process which I of course was the only council member to oppose. Thanks. Thank you, Lucas. Larry same question. What more can the city do to curtail climate change? It can do a lot, a lot. And the first and foremost is update the climate action plan. So we've declared a climate emergency but we don't have a plan. That is first and foremost in using our commissions, our NGOs like Cool Davis, getting real community engagement in that has got to be a huge factor. Oh, the bike Davis, I mean, the whole crew of people who are trying to get us away from the internal combustion engine as our primary source of getting around. But there are a lot of other things we could do. Updating the tree ordinance and the urban forestry plan and the tree technical manual. These have been going on for about four years and we need to get those done. Creating a gray water ordinance that was going the last time I ran two years ago. It's still not done. Upgrading city buildings to LED and low flow water fixtures. That's something we should be doing. Installing city owned solar on city rooftops and over city parking lots. And doing that before we do it with open space is would be my vote. Repairing bike paths again and connecting them into a continuous and safe system. So we've got a lot of bike paths but there are these big gaps and it keeps it from being a useful overall system. So again, yes, working on transit, especially including the addition of electric autonomous shuttles to our most used routes and going paperless at the city to improve the website and improving the website to help transparency and communication as well as saving resources and money. Thank you, Larry. I don't see any secondary responses to this. So I will move on to the fourth question. Larry, you will have the first response to this question and the question is, the recently developed downtown plan will affect all residents of Davis and the new council will be responsible for its implementation. What is your understanding of the status of the downtown plan and what are your top priorities for implementing it? Great, so I was a member of the downtown plan committee and kind of since that body has dissolved, it doesn't, at least as far as I know, there hasn't been a lot of community outreach in the process. The downtown plan, my understanding is it's currently in the phase of having SQL documents prepared, viable alternatives of the draft plan are required for this review but community engagement has been stopped as far as I know. The downtown plan will absolutely affect all the residents of Davis and community engagement should not have ceased with the end of the downtown plan advisory committee. This is the community's plan and the community needs to be engaged. So implementation should not be simply a question of issuing permits but should include many of the aspects that were recommended by the advisory committee such as sustainability, accessibility and affordability requirements. I believe that maintaining our downtown urban tree canopy is vital to the success of this plan because as stressed by Opticost, the design consultant, the major factor of success in our downtown will be placemaking, right? Nobody wants to go to a place that nobody wants to go. You want people to go there and it's gotta be a good place. So getting a robust downtown means getting a place that people want to be and our trees are a huge part of that. To me, that is the key to our successful implementation. Thanks. Thank you, Larry. Same question to you, Lucas. I will repeat it. The recently developed downtown plan will affect all residents of Davis and the new council will be responsible for its implementation. What is your understanding of the status of the downtown plan and what are your top priorities for implementing it? Great, thanks very much. Well, I am super excited about the downtown plan. It was a really excellent community engagement process and I'm honored to have 12 out of the 15 downtown plan committee members endorsing my campaign for re-election of the city council. You know, the EIR, the environmental impact report process is underway. So that's being drafted right now and it will be out for circulation with the final adoption of that is expected of next June. So it takes a while to do that but there will be a community engagement and outreach as the downtown, the EIR environmental impact report is underway. The thing that's great about this plan especially is that it's going to allow for projects that fall within the new plan to be covered by the environmental impact report and be covered by CEQA, the California Environmental Quality Act. So the process streamlining has occurred by consolidating what is currently about seven different documents and that one must navigate when trying to come forward with a potential idea or project for the downtown and sometimes those documents are actually conflicting. So the priorities for the downtown plan for me are there's missing middle housing, there's a real opportunity to build additional residential in the downtown. Having the 24-7 presence downtown with residential and mixed use is going to be very important. And then 21st century infrastructure and streetscapes that are more balanced for transit bikes and Peds. And then the key is going to be getting a few projects going to catalyze the new infrastructure. Thank you. Larry, yes, I see your raise your hand. Do you have a secondary response? Go ahead. Yeah, I think another key to implementation is not to destroy what we also have. So we have a great downtown and we have great traditional neighborhoods around that downtown and keeping those transitions from our much taller, at least in the draft plan downtown to the traditional neighborhoods, I think is super important. Having a sense of who you are and where you come from is pretty vital going forward. Thanks. Thank you, Larry. Lucas, I see your, go ahead with your secondary response. Yeah, I appreciate that. Yeah, I just was, I'm excited about, because there's a few different actual parcels that I think are waiting for the CEQA documentation to be done before the sort of projects come forward. But the ACE housewares building is a good example. It's been vacant for over a year at this point. The Hibbert lumber property takes up almost an entire city block between fifth and then six by the co-op. The co-op shopping center itself and the Sweetbriar site just to the north of that. So it's really exciting to think about the different potential plans that might materialize for an increasing density in the downtown and offering an opportunity of mixed use and residential housing. I think also, after all, downtown infill is really the type of ultimate. Thank you. Thank you. Lucas, do you have another secondary response, Larry? No? Great. We are more than halfway through our questions. So I do wanna remind our audience that the sooner you send in your questions to ask.lwvda at gmail.com, the quicker we can get to maximize all the questions. So yes, please again, the email address will be askask, period, lwvda at gmail.com. And now we will be moving on to our fifth question. Lucas, you will be answering this question first. And the question is, the city faced financial problems before COVID. How can it dig out of an even deeper hole now? Thank you very much. Yeah, so I mean, the issues facing the city of Davis in terms of finances are facing most communities, especially now due to the downturn from the COVID-19 crisis. As an example, I mean, we have been really focused on diversifying revenue for the city. Increased ability for economic development is one item where I think in one place where we can look for additional opportunities for additional revenue. So for example, the several new hotels that are either for currently finished or currently under construction will bring much needed additional revenue to the city in the form of transient occupancy taxes that most Davisites will never pay because they won't be staying at the hotels, but those are going to be very helpful to the city's fiscal situation. Additionally, one item that I think I'm really excited about that should be coming up in the next couple of weeks at the city council meeting is a funding plan for our infrastructure and figure out, especially as it relates to roads and how to actually come, provide a path forward for being able to take on the repairs that are needed now more than ever. So there are definitely ways for us to continue to tighten our belts certainly, but also to continue to raise revenues to address the city's fiscal sustainability issues. Thank you, Lucas. Larry, same question. The city faced financial problems before COVID. How can it dig itself out of an even deeper hole now? Right. And just so looking at what the CDC are saying, what the World Health Organization are saying and looking at how the US as a community are dealing or not dealing with COVID, this is something that's going to persist. We are probably not going to have a vaccine, especially disseminated to everybody for I would say at least a year, or at least actually I'm not saying that, that's kind of a CDC thing. And so we really need to have an economic plan for this, also because the carryover effects are going to be much longer than that. Even once we get a vaccine, the results of this economic downturn are going to be huge. So one of the first things I would have done as a city council would move to put together a task force with our commission members, with staff, with hopefully representatives, financial representatives from the university, and get the community going and get the engagement going to solve a lot of these problems. Our commissions, our finance budget commission has some amazing people on it. We've got some really good staff who do this kind of thing and have navigated downturns, but this is a much bigger issue. So dealing with that. It's definitely something where we need all the voices to hear, but we need to think about economic development in another way. So city-owned solar to me is really important, and I really think we should go with things like that and others, thanks. Thank you. I don't see any secondary responses to this question, so we'll go to the next. What can be learned, and Larry, you will be answering this question first. What can be learned from other California cities that have high housing costs, low availability, and limited affordable housing? Examples, Arenda, Palo Alto, Santa Barbara, et cetera? Well, we can learn from those that have successfully dealt with it. I mean, one of the things about doing new affordable housing is it's tough. And in fact, I think a great example is the University Commons project where affordable was figured out by a math equation to be defined in a legal way, but those costs are actually higher than market rate on campus. So I think one of the things we need to do is use monies from development to rework our existing housing stock into affordable housing, because that's a lot easier to make changes to existing structures and to try and build them from the ground up, from scratch, and make them affordable. There are also issues with habitability and safety in houses. Like one of the problems with Davis having such a very tight rental market and having vacancies below 1% is that it's really easy for landlords to leave off on maintenance. And so housing safety and habitability tend to go down. So also moving, getting something to deal with that is pretty important, as well as affordability. Thank you, Larry. Lucas, same question. What can be learned from others, California cities that have high housing costs, low availability, and limited affordable housing? Examples, Arenda, Palo Alto, Santa Barbara. Sure, I think there's a couple of items. Firstly, in a lot of those cases, the city councils at a certain point decided to start to say yes, and actually approve additional housing where we're appropriate. And I think that that's something that is needed and has been happening in Davis. But obviously there comes with trade-offs of approving a new housing. Additionally, one of the things that I am most interested in and have been talking with some of my colleagues in some of the other college towns in California is that there used to be for a long time, this is pre-great recession, there was an annual sort of town and gown conference of all of the college towns in California. So the college towns and then the city councils and then also the respective universities. And there was a lot to be learned from the other university in college towns in California. So for example, we recently, when the city was passing its renters rights ordinance and putting the renters rights program into effect, that actually was modeled after the city of Palo Alto. So that's an example where we can continue to look at some of the other best practices that other communities, especially the college towns, and many of whom are also have very expensive housing costs and lack of availability. And then lastly, right now, due to COVID, we're seeing the vacancy rate in Davis. It may be, we'll see what the official rate is, but anecdotally, we're hearing it's between 10 and almost potentially 20%. So that's a real concern at the moment. Thank you, Lucas. I don't see any, yes, Larry, go ahead, secondary response. Yeah, just a real quick one. While certainly it is always valuable to look at what other people have done, it's also really important that you look at your specific situation and don't just apply things kind of out of the box off the shelf. When you've got, I mean, every community is different. And we have a similar community to other places, but we also have a different one. So we just need to make sure that those solutions work for Davis. Thank you, Larry. I don't see any more secondary responses. You both do have, Larry, you have two secondary responses. Lucas, you have three left if you wanna use them. If not, we will continue by going to closing statements. We are done with the moderated questions. I do wanna send a reminder out to the audience one more time for any questions you may have. We will probably start audience questions before 4 p.m. because we're doing really great on time. So again, once more, the email is ask.lwvda at gmail.com. And now we will start with Lucas. You can continue by giving your closing statement first. Sure, thanks so much. I appreciate it. Well, first again, thank you to the League of Women Voters, Davis area for hosting this candidates forum. This year, of course, has been unlike pretty much any other. And so almost all of the campaign activities are happening virtually. So really appreciate you hosting this today. So I have the privilege of serving a community that I love. And despite the current challenges, there's still a lot more work for us to do together. A few of my key priorities in the years ahead, including to work working and rebuilding our local economy and community from the impacts of COVID-19, ongoing partnerships with the interfaith community and the county and UC Davis to address homelessness, increase affordable housing opportunities throughout the community. Gonna continue to work on sustainability efforts to address adverse climate change impacts, increase investment in citywide infrastructure and neighborhoods. And I always prioritize listening, solving problems and implementing good public processes. I'd be honored to have your vote for reelection to the city council. Thanks very much. Thank you, Lucas. I feel to mention that the candidates do have only a minute for their closing statements. And now, Larry, your closing statement, please. Right, hey, yeah, many thanks to everyone at the League of Women Voters for hosting this forum. Thanks to everyone who is participating in democracy, including Lucas, who was obviously participating, especially this year. It is so very important that we have an informed electorate and that we have groups that are willing to do the work to make this kind of thing happen. This is truly a great example of community engagement. So Davis has a lot of problems and a lot of surrounding municipalities do as well. The budget, housing, public safety, roads and bike paths, homelessness, the environmental impact and, of course, the pandemic. We will also be updating our general plan to describe how and at what rate we intend to grow going forward. Robust community engagement will help us achieve better outcomes for all of these issues. We will need to be innovative and innovation always comes from the community. Thank you all for your participation and no matter who you vote for, please vote on or before November 3rd. Thank you very much. Thank you, Larry. This concludes our closing statements. Now, we have a message from our league president, Mary Jo Bryan, while we collate audience questions. One last plug for the email is askperiodlvda.com. Mary Jo, go ahead. Hey, thank you, Cuomo. And thank you, both of you, for taking on this big responsibility of running for city council also, as we all know. The League of Women Voters of Davis was born in 1957. You're going to hear some history under the leadership of a future Davis mayor, Sandy Motley. It grew into a vibrant, nonpartisan organization and thrived for many years. After years of dedicated service to the Davis community, the leadership faced the reality of declining or diminishing active members and the lack of younger members to take over the leadership. The league disbanded in 2014. In May of 2019, a group of four individuals, Bob, Bung, Mary, myself, Mary Jo, Georgina, Valencia and Matt Williams met over coffee to discuss how to recreate, reestablish the league in Davis. That initial group of four researched the organization of the first Davis league and followed the steps established by the state league to renew the league. The state league on August 4th, 2019 announced the Davis chapter's official status. Our current board members include myself, Mary Jo Bryant as president, Bob Bung as vice president and voter service chair. Judy Higerson as membership chair and voter registration chair. And Como Hawk as our social media and marketing chair. The health care committee chair is Michelle Famula. Along with the five of us, we are grateful for all of our members who are actively working to provide nonpartisan community forums, voter education materials and get out the vote in the upcoming November 3rd election. Highlights during the first year included forums on the Davis general plan, housing discrimination and affordable housing, two healthcare forums and local candidate forums for the county supervisor, city council and school board and school board and voter registration where the league members helped 1300 UC Davis students register to vote for the 2020 primary election. Now we are partnering with the old county elections department regarding assisting with the get out the vote efforts. Almost 3000 how to register English and Spanish flyers were distributed throughout through the Yolo food bank, meals on wheels and the library. League has been asked also again to assist UC Davis to serve as docents for ballot drop offs and voter assistance. Currently, we have close to 130 members including six men and 24 household members committed to providing nonpartisan community education. I invite all women and men to consider membership in ordination to the league of voters Davis area. Our education fund is a 501 C3 and supports activities like this one. You are attending today. We appreciate your participation and invite you to check out our website at www.lwvdavisarea.org. And oh, good. They have questions ready. Excellent. Thank you, Mary Jo. We do have our questions, audience questions ready. We will have up to 430 today for audience submitted questions and each candidate will be limited to a one minute response. A secondary 30 second response is allowed for each candidate per question. We will continue with audience questions until 430 or until we run out of questions. And for our first question, we will start with Larry Gunther and then we will alternate between Larry Gunther and Lucas Freericks. Larry, we'll start with you and I will repeat the question for each candidate. The first question is, what are the best and worst city council decisions in the last four years? How would you improve the decision-making process? Best ones, I think the water, the surface water program was a good one. Worst ones, bright nights there. Bright nights pretty up there. But I think even, well, disk I'm not sure. I think we have this emergency environmental declaration but it's going to be a negative impact on the environment. It's going to increase our environmental impact. So while I don't know that I would put that one of the worst, it is one of the biggest. So I think city council holding fast to the pools, to the pool closure was actually a good one. It took a lot of, there was a lot of pressure but I think it was the right decision for health reasons. Thank you, Larry. Lucas, same question. What are the best and worst city council decisions in the last four years? And how would you improve the decision-making process? Sure, thanks. Well, I appreciate the mention about the surface water project that was actually a little bit before four years ago but nevertheless it was still a good one. But I think over the course of the past four years there's been a number of, I think, I don't know if they're the best but I think there's some solid ones in the right direction. Creating a renters resources program and setting up that ordinance in place is exactly one of those types of really working, trying to help community needs as they come forward. We also just set up and acted a couple of weeks ago a new program with the International House that's gonna do, they're gonna do systemic racism and sort of a bunch of trainings with across the community and all the different and sort of offer those trainings to the nonprofit community. So I'm really excited about that. Bright Night for sure, I think was probably one of the worst council decisions in the past four years and for all the reasons I've been stated previously and of course I voted against it as well thinking it was a bad choice for the city. Thank you, Lucas. Yes, Larry, secondary response. Yeah, actually, so one of the bad things that I think that has been brought in is the lease by the bed model for a lot of the new houses. And the housing that's been approved, I mean, it is, I still haven't talked to a lot of students who have said that they're in favor of it and what it really did was increase the cost of beds and it also made those rooms really non-viable for a big part of our rental demand. Yes, go ahead, Lucas. Yeah, the other part of your question was about how can we improve the policymaking process and I appreciate the number of commissioners that signed on to this sort of open letter asking for changes in the policymaking process. Actually, literally if this coming council meeting on Tuesday night, coming Tuesday night, we're going to be having a discussion about those items. A lot of the items that are contained within that policy proposal actually are things that should be done and I think look forward to helping implement and get those in place to help improve the overall policymaking process of the city. Thank you, Lucas. The next question will be directed to you, Lucas, first and then Larry. It kind of builds upon the last question. How would you rate the relationships among the city council commissions and city staff and how would you improve these relationships? Sure. Well, I think, so I'm, you know, the liaison for a bunch of the city commissions each of my colleagues that are liaisons to other ones. So, you know, I think personally that I have very good relationships with the individual commissions that I'm liaison to, Natural Resources Commission, Utilities Commission, Police Accountability Commission, Planning Commission and such. That said, there's always more work to do and I certainly feel like we are going to be taking on as a city council the open letter and the policy sort of transparency initiative that the variety of city commissioners signed their names to because I think in part, because I think I certainly, but we as a council take this item very seriously and feel like there's some significant improvements that could be added to both the commission and also the council decision-making process that would help make things more transparent and also better for the public as well. Thank you, Lucas. Larry, same question. How would you rate the relationships among city council commissions and the city staff? How would you improve these relationships? So there is a huge amount of variability depending on which commissions and which staff liaisons. There's also a great deal of variability with council members being present at the meetings for which they are liaison. Gloria Partida is the liaison for, one of the liaison for the tree commission of which I'm the chair. And she has been at, if not every meeting pretty much every meeting since she's been on. So that's been great. And Rob Kane is great staff member. He's great at what he does in the urban forestry department, but he's also a great liaison. His minutes, by the way, are awesome. So recording things is great, but I think the transparency initiative really tells people right there that a lot of other commissioners were not super happy with the way things were going and getting that enacted, including allowing commissions to appoint interim members, I think would be a huge step in the right direction and kind of wonder why. Thank you, Larry. Thank you, Larry. I don't see any secondary responses to this. So we will move on to the next question. Larry, you will be the first to answer this next question and then we'll go to Lucas. The speeding problem on our city streets is getting very dangerous. How can the council better protect children? The elderly, bicycle riding and disabled residents? Larry, go ahead. So yeah, we have been working, our neighborhood, my neighborhood, Old East Davis, has been working for years and years trying to get traffic calming. One of the problem with our big wide open city streets is that they are an invitation to move really fast. So on the downtown planning committee, which I was on, the trying to get streets that are inherently safer was a big part of some of the discussions. We'll see how much makes it into the plan, but getting streets designed so that they slow people down. And I think actually, I was actually a proponent of making the speed limit downtown 15 miles an hour so that it was safer for pedestrians, bikes and cars who are sharing the same space. I guess I'll stop there. Thank you, Larry. Same question for you, Lucas. The speeding problem on our city streets is getting very dangerous. How can the council better protect children, the elderly, bicycle riding and disabled residents? Yeah, this is actually a major issue that I'm hearing across the city, pretty universally regardless of the area that someone resides. For example, there are a lot of folks that do some of the streets, sort of like A Street, Miller Drive, Oak Avenue is an example as a cut through from between fifth and eighth as an example. Also on sort of the old East Davis side, Fourth Street has really become a major high speed street as well. And there are a bunch of streets all around the city that were hearing this from residents. There is a real need for the city and the council to prioritize funding for neighborhood traffic calming. During the Great Recession, it was almost totally eliminated due to budget constraints. But for the past several years, the city council has put in approximately a quarter million dollars per year for neighborhood traffic calming. And there are some real low cost items that can be added to really help reduce speeds and also such as speed bumps and speed boards and such, but also to really help pedestrians and... Thank you, Lucas. We will be, I don't see any secondary responses for this question. So we will move on to the next one. Lucas, you will be the first to answer the next question. This is in regarding the disc project. It's a two-part question. What is your precision on Measure B? And if Measure B is approved, how will it affect downtown and MACE traffic? So I voted as a council member to place Measure B on the ballot for consideration of the voters. And I'm personally supportive of the project, although I know we'll find out if whether or not the citizens of Davis decide that they believe it is the appropriate project for the city to pursue. I do think that it is needed for economic development and to help bolster the city's financial position. I also think it's foolish to think and people have keep saying that, well, it's a bad environmental move. If this project doesn't get built here, it will get built somewhere else in an adjacent community and have far less of environmental and sort of sustainability standards associated with it. And so I think having a higher standard in Davis is important if any kind of project is gonna be built and put before the voters. In terms of traffic, there's definitely gonna be increases in traffic, but I think the build out of the project is over several decades. And so I think that we will see that if the voters actually approve the project in the first place. Thank you, Lucas. Larry, same question. This is regarding the disc project. What is your position on Measure B? And if Measure B is approved, how will it affect downtown and MACE traffic? Obviously it will make MACE traffic a lot worse. I'll start with the last part of the question. I mean, the environmental impact report says it right out. And those are really very often conservative estimates, but it's thousands and thousands of trips a day. And putting off the solution to that problem is I'm not a fan of. So I was taught not to leave messes for other people and making that huge impact of both environmental and traffic. And kind of hoping we'll deal with it by then that's how the Bay Area got into the traffic mess it's in. That's how LA got into the traffic mess it's in. And just because someone else is gonna do something wrong doesn't mean you should do something wrong. I think there are some big issues with the financing and the estimates for income from the city that were not addressed, questions that finance budget commissioners have that were not really addressed. And the overall design is good. Like we need to leverage the university for sure. But we can't just, we can't lose money or lose environmental ground on every deal and hope to make it up in volume by approving a lot of projects. That's just not gonna work. I think we lost our time keeper. I'm not seeing him. I'm sorry about that. I will end this for a second. I'm wondering if maybe I can just, I'm hoping he will come back on within minutes. If not, I can start a timer on my phone. Technology works in favor. There we go. He said he is back. So I still don't see him on my specific screen. Let's see. Well, I will, again, let me see he's not showing up. I'm just gonna start a timer till I do see him on the screen. And see, might hear a different response, a little different beep. So let's see, technical difficulties always happen. So there we go. The next question is going to be back at you, Larry. And it's actually a little bit of a buildup on the last one. So, oh, I think he is back. Yes, the timekeeper is back several. We see the next question, Larry. This is for you first and then Lucas and give his response. Many Davis citizens have pointed to the mace mess as an example of a failure by the city and transparency, public disclosure and public engagement, as well as an example of how city processes are reactive rather than proactive. What have you learned from the mace mess situation that causes you to agree or disagree with those assessments? Well, I would say more than learning. It's kind of reinforced. I mean, it's one of the biggest reasons I'm running for city council is that this kind of thing, transparency, accountability and true community engagement are big issues for me as you probably keep hearing and I keep repeating. And the mace mess is just one more of those. So we have on our commissions people with resumes that are better than the resumes of people we hire as consultants. We have planners, we have bike infrastructure engineers we've got financial geniuses, right? We've got these people on our commissions and utilizing those people and really getting the community involved. Again, not just input, not just having input and having your two minutes at city council. Thank you. Welcome to the next public commenter, but having real community engagement in creating the solutions to these issues. It's what I'm about. It's why I'm running and I'll leave it there. Thank you, Larry. Lucas same question, I'll repeat it. Many Davis citizens have pointed to the mace mess as an example of a failure by the city in transparency, public disclosure and public engagement as well as an example of how city processes are reactive rather than proactive. And we seem to have lost our timekeeper but what have you learned from the mace mess situation that causes you to agree or disagree with those assessments? And that was nice. So a couple of things. First of all, the changes to mace Boulevard took several years to actually from idea to implementation and during that same time, we've had a massive uptick in the usage of all the apps such as ways that we're directing major amounts of traffic off of interstate 80 and trying to take shortcuts on Tremont Road to mace Boulevard and then try to get back on interstate 80 to avoid the traffic through Davis. So that actually sort of coincided with the same timing of the changes to mace Boulevard. I think there's a lot to be learned from that situation. No question. First of all, I'm one of the only council members that's actually continued to show up in South Davis to every public meeting with the neighbors with angry, angry, irate neighbors from both El Massero which is not in the city limits but also from some of the neighborhoods in South Davis. And while there is definitely a lot of folks that are opposed to the changes on mace Boulevard there are many, many folks including many parents who are very happy with the changes there because they now feel that their children can actually go to and from say, Pioneer Elementary safely and they were not able to do that before. So there's still more changes to be done to fine tune it. There were definitely things that needed to that went where it went too far but we are going to be doing that over the course of the next year and have committed to doing that and you'll see the continued engagement by the whole entire city council and the city on making those adjustments as needed. Thanks very much. Thank you. Yes, Larry, go ahead. Great job with the sign by the way, Kamal. That was awesome. And I forgot what I was going to say but the, yep, I forgot what I was going to say. It's okay. If you think of it later you can do I won't count this as a secondary response. So moving on to the next question Lucas you'll be the first to answer this question and then Larry. So how would you serve the supported housing needs of groups such as intellectually or develop mentally delayed adults and their families? Great. Well, that's a really great question. It's one that's very personal for me too as my adult, my younger brother but who is an adult is intellectually it has an intellectual disability and is needed in needing these types of services here in Davis. And there's actually a pretty large community of folks with this intellectual disabilities in Davis because Davis has actually had a lot of services available over the years. So Team Davis is just one of the nonprofit services as an example and things that exist in the community. But I think, so for example, protecting some of the things that we already have. So Pine Tree Gardens is a perfect example. There are two adult group homes that exist for Pine Tree Gardens and I'm fortunate to be on the say Pine Tree Gardens Committee and helping to raise money to keep those two houses intact in Davis. But we need to continue to look for ways to partner with some of the affordable housing nonprofits to provide additional units for those with intellectual disabilities in our community. Thank you, Lucas. Same question, Larry. How would you serve the supported housing needs of groups such as intellectually or developmentally delayed adults and their families? Yeah, thank you. And I also have a cousin who's a Down syndrome cousin. So working with Team Davis, some of our MGOs and working with county and other regional groups to utilize some of our affordable housing or specific housing for those people is pretty critical. And having services for them that is associated with that housing and getting those services to the people that need them is really important for making it really work. So how we fund that is obviously an issue but using our existing resources to the best ability and really working with the county I think is critical. Thank you, Larry. Yes, Lucas. Secondary. You'll have to unmute yourself, Lucas. Sorry about that. Sometimes the moderator has been muting or unmuting us. So, okay, apologies. Or maybe it's the timekeeper. So yeah, I do think there are a few other items that I sort of forgot to mention. I think Summerhouse is also another long time nonprofit in Yolo County that has several residential facilities. And those are both as well. The ones in Davis are very important. I think the key is there's a real need out there that exists and there are in a lot of these nonprofits a lot of turnover on their boards and a lot of original board members who were there in the 70s and 80s and now are terming out. And so there's a new generation that's really needed to actually engage with the community and make sure that these services continue to exist. Thank you, Lucas. This next, oh yes, Larry, go ahead. Secondary, your response. So this is actually from the MACE question and transparency, if that's all right. That's okay. Okay, so yeah, transparency and how do you make it better? And this should have been on the top of my list, sorry. You make it better by having beforehand, having metrics that determine success and the respite center is a great example. Then having those metrics posted transparently for everyone on the city's website is crucial. So I guess it just went red, I guess. Thank you. So the next question will go back to you, Larry, I think because Lucas was the last person to answer the first, the last question. Sorry, I'm not losing track, but so the next question, Larry, you'll go first. Your relationship between the city and UCD is critical to the future of Davis. What ideas do you have to improve this relationship? So yes, it is critical. And that is one of the things that I actually think the disc is, has right, is dealing with spin-off companies. I've got several friends, graduate students who took their research and moved it into a, tried to at least, and are trying to move it into a business. One is turning actually solid waste poop into plastic. So that's critical, but we need to have a combined long-range development plan. One of the issues we have been dealing with is the housing issue. And we've been dealing with that, we being the city because the university's development plan doesn't really take us into account. I think that is absolutely critical going forward and convincing the university that we are partners and community members is absolutely critical and that we have to work together. Thank you, Larry. Lucas, same question. The relationship between the city and UC Davis is critical to the future of Davis. What ideas do you have to improve this relationship? Sure, thanks so much. Well, firstly, I think I'm really proud of the work that both myself and former Mayor Lee did together as the subcommittee from the city council in negotiating a long-term MOU with UC Davis as well as the County of Yolo. And I appreciate supervisors, Provenza and Saylor also participating in that from the county. We, it took us three full days of being locked in a room with a mediator to actually come, ultimately come up with a legally binding MOU that commits UC Davis not only to build housing on campus but also commits them to providing financial contributions to a variety of some of our most pressing transportation needs and projects. I think that so that's just a demonstrated example of where we've actually been working with them. It's easy to say we need to have a joint long-range development plan when they have our constitutionally protected entity and get to kind of do their own thing and have no ability for us to just, well, you can't demand that they participate. Thank you, Lucas. No secondary responses to this question. So moving forward, Lucas, you will answer the next question. First, before we do that, we only have two questions left from the audience unless I get something last minute. So I just wanted to let everyone know that. And Lucas, the next question to you is the council has approved many student oriented housing department projects in recent years. Do you think we need more student oriented housing or more diverse housing that will serve a general population, such as workforce housing and family oriented housing? Yeah, absolutely. We need more of a diversity of the other types of housing and not just student oriented alone housing. We did develop and approve some, some student oriented housing projects because there hadn't been any done in over 10 years. And so while there has been criticisms for doing that, we had at the time, nearly less than 1% vacancy rate. So there was a real need for additional housing period. But I think as it was example, give an example of just most recently the university commons project where I opposed that project, it was too big for the site, but also the issues around affordability were a concern and also the rent by the bed model that was mentioned previously. We definitely need to see the rent by the bed model and see some of these student oriented projects be actually finished and be open to the public before we continue to approve more of them. Thank you, Lucas. Larry, same question. Yeah, great question. And here's it. So I was a student for quite a while, came to Davis as a graduate student and the students I speak to, again, they're like, yeah, whatever, at least by the bed, how does it help me? Except it makes the rooms more expensive. And here's the thing. Students are the most flexible rental group there is. They can and they do rent anything. So why we spent so much of our increased capacity specifically designed for a group that doesn't need as much specific designing but actually eliminates a lot of groups, working families. So you say university and people think students, but even according to the UC, about half the population of campus is faculty and staff. We have thousands of jobs in Davis and they are commuting out of town. That's the housing we need to go. Yes, Lucas, secondary responses question. Which is really unfortunate that Mr. Gunther opposes measure B because it would provide 850 units of housing that is exactly the type of housing that he says a community needs. And I appreciate that there's an ability for us to consider various types of housing. The reality is in Davis, we're not gonna build our way out of the expensiveness of Davis. We would have to open the floodgates and build tens of thousands of units to sort of drive the prices down. And that's not going to happen, especially with measure J or now measure D on the ballot and likely to be renewed again. It's gonna be a hard time building additional housing across the community that is truly affordable. Thank you. Yes, Larry, respond. Yeah, measure, disc does have some housing. It has over 5,000 jobs and 800 units. So it's actually a net housing loss. It's going to put more pressure on the housing market. Maybe that's just my opinion, but there it is. Thank you, Larry. The next question will go to you. And I think this might be the final question we have from the audience today. Thank you both. So Larry, the next question is the CEQA, which is the California Environmental Quality Act document for the downtown plan requires the development of alternatives. Why has the public input process been halted and not engaged in developing alternates? Thanks, Kamal. I mean, maybe Lucas has a better answer for that. I don't know. I would like the community to be engaged. We, our neighborhood association has worked very hard to try and be engaged and we have gotten anywhere. Yes, the community engagement I thought was one of the better examples on the downtown plan. But again, since the end of the downtown plan advisory committee, it has ceased. And I have the same question. I'll just say that. I would like to see much more robust community engagement all through that process. It's supposed to be the community's plan. Let's keep it the community's plan. Thanks. Thank you, Larry. Lucas, I'll repeat the question one more time. The CEQA, the California Environmental Quality Act document for the downtown plan requires the development of alternatives. Why has the public input process been halted and not engaged in developing alternatives? I think it's mostly an issue of sequencing. I think that we're getting ready to, as I mentioned in the earlier question, release the draft EIR for that process to be analyzed. And so there is plan to be public engagement throughout that process with the final approval of the EIR for next June of 2021. So that's still about whatever, eight or nine months away. So I think the plan is to still have plenty of opportunities for the public to engage on it. I also think that I would say, I don't think this is an excuse, but I think it's an example of just the reality. The downtown plan advisory committee had its final meeting early part of this year around January or so. There has been a worldwide pandemic that's taken much of the priority over the course of the past year. And so the ability to do community outreach and engagement was really halted for several months and is sort of getting into a new process with all these Zoom meetings and outreach through community meetings via Zoom. So I wouldn't say, stay tuned. It's coming up. Larry, yes, you had a secondary response. Yeah, and while that is absolutely true, no one's gonna argue that we haven't had a pandemic. But development projects have been sailing through, it seems unhindered. But that getting those alternatives future, when plans come out and then there's the engagement, it's really hard to change those plans. And I haven't seen historically a lot of the alternatives in an EIR get changed through the public comment period. Thanks. Thank you. I don't see any more for their secondary responses to this question. So we will have one last, this will be our final question of the evening. And I think Larry, you are answering this first, or yes. No, did you go, no, sorry, Lucas, I'm so sorry. Lucas, I think you will be answering this question first because Larry answered the last one. It is, one of the responsibilities of the post-election city council will be redistricting for the 2022 election. Do you favor creation of a citizens redistricting commission? Please explain your answers. If a citizens redistricting commission is created, when should they first convene and what should their powers be? Well, so because the 2020 census is underway and we will have those results at some point, we'll have updated numbers for residents of the city. And so therefore the districts will of course have to be adjusted accordingly for the coming election. I do think that as an engagement process with a citizens advisory group or board would be really helpful. We haven't gone through that process before, so I don't have a exact template or some framework or process in mind, but I do think that we were somewhat forced into the district elections, but in a rapid nature previously. And even though we were, and we were still able to conduct a fair amount of public outreach engagement during pre-COVID during the transition to district elections, I expect that to be much more robust in the redistricting process that would occur for the 2022 election. Thank you, Lucas. Same question, Larry. One of the responsibilities of the post-election city council will be restricting for the 2022 election. Do you favor a creation of our citizens redistricting commission? Please explain your answer. And if a citizens redistricting commission is created, when should they first convene and what should their powers be? I absolutely do. I don't know about commissions, since commissions are kind of permanent. So I don't know if it's just getting a little pedantic, but a task force since they happen every 10 years. One of the things, first of all, you can't start too early with the commissions. They meet once a month. So a year is 12 meetings and they usually take a month off. So that's a lot of meetings. And it's a big job. So I would actually like to see that happen very quickly. Now, why not, right? Let's get it started. We need to know the initial conditions, but I would also like them to discuss the questions of, for instance, should we even maintain district elections? There are a lot of advantages. There are a lot of downsides. I think we need to have a community discussion like we did not have and that's not on the city. That was a 90 day timeline, but we should also talk about ranked choice voting. I bet the people in South Davis would love ranked choice voting right now. We need to really talk about how we elect people, how many, where, when, and how. Thank you, Larry. So that concludes, I don't see any secondary responses. So this concludes our Davis city council district three candidate forum. I would really like to thank you both for your participation, both Lucas Freerichs and Larry Gunther. And this forum has been recorded and will be available on our Facebook tomorrow. It is facebook.com slash LWV Davis area. And we have a short survey for you to fill out when you exit the Zoom meeting. And if you have a few minutes, we would really love some of your feedback so we can improve our forums moving forward. Thank you to our audience. Stay safe, vote and have a good rest of your day. Take care, everyone. Thanks very much. Appreciate it. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. Yes, vote please. Everyone.