 to the city considers here at Davis Media Access. When I say here at Davis Media Access this is kind of the COVID-19 version of this. I want to give my thanks to DMA's technical staff for helping us figure out how to keep doing these shows. We do these shows because in a town like ours where civic engagement is high this kind of transparency and getting to know our elected officials and the important issues that are before our community is very important. So I'm very very pleased to welcome our new mayor Gloria Partida. Thanks for joining us today Gloria. Thank you for having me. It's always a pleasure. So you were recently seated as mayor and it's a it's a historic seating because you are our community's first Latinx mayor and given a lot of the issues that we're dealing with and your engagement with the community. I think the time is really right so I want to congratulate you first of all and thank you for stepping up into this leadership role and you've become mayor at a time when as I said we're dealing with COVID-19. We're dealing with meetings and community input in the age of Zoom and none of that can be very easy. I know that you had kind of an epically long city council meeting this past Tuesday and one of the things that that was on the agenda that took a lot of bandwidth was the University Commons project which is the envisioned revamp of what's been long been called University Mall. So can you tell us where things were left and perhaps what some of your takeaways from that meeting were? So we sort of knew going in that it was going to be a long meeting and that there were a lot of issues that were a little contentious because it had already gone through the planning commission and at that commission meeting there were a lot of concerns and the planning commission did not approve of the you know of the form that it was in and so we kind of had a heads up for that and you know early on we knew that there were 97 public public commenters and that number increased as the evening wore on. So some of the concerns were the size of it, the affordability because it's a mixed use project it started off as not needing to do any affordable units but the City Council changed that policy and so then they were required to do some affordable units and then people were concerned about the traffic around that area and so those are some of the questions that we received that came in through planning commission as well as through some of the commenters and a lot of the emails that we received and so we sent put together a list of questions for the developers to to work through and see if they could come in a little closer to what the community wanted. So that has that now has been the vote on this has been delayed to is it an August 18th meeting 16th? Sorry I don't have the date at my fingertips. It's the 18th. On the 18th we have an all call meeting and so we will take it up again then. Okay so that's one of the issues one of the other big issues that's happening in town is that of police accountability and perhaps reframing how police do their jobs and what policing looks like in the Davis community. You have a Facebook page that is not your personal page but for City Council and you wrote something interesting the other day where you talked about the value of discussion but how it can be infinite if no change actually comes out of that. Can you share with us some of your thoughts around the process and where this discussion heads next? Sure so that particular remark was around the incident that happened at Moore Village and where there was an Asian American citizen who had an encounter with some of the residents there and the police were called in and there are I think two points that are happening in that one incident. One is sort of the you know when people are dubbing the Karen incidents where people are you know showing their implicit bias by being suspicious of people who don't look like themselves and call the police and then also it came on the heels of the George Floyd incident where people are calling for a change in policing and having more training for police so they come into incidents such as that particular one with more sensitivity and more understanding around cultural issues and do you really need to send in the police in an incident like that and so the conversation around refunding or defunding or reallocation of police dollars into places that would give us more not just safety but have us communicate with each other better and be in better relationship with each other in the city. Okay so what happens next there's a police accountability commission there's also the human relations commission I think they both play a role here. Yes and so on Monday the social services had a presentation around public safety and you know thinking about ways that that we could use our resources better the police accountability commission held a meeting and discussed this issue as well and then this evening this will be the second time that the human relations commission will be having a discussion around you know what stakeholders do we want to talk to in our community to ask about where they think it would be best to you know put the the bulk of our resources around and where do we need those resources and so they will have a forum with the ACLU this evening that meeting starts at 6 30. Okay thank you so during I'm switching gears here during the pandemic I've been talking to a lot of people and a lot of organizations and businesses about the impact of COVID-19 on on them and of course for the city I know we're dealing with very real economic impact I know that right now businesses are filing their second quarter sales tax returns and and of course that's going to be a huge issue with so many businesses closing so what are the discussions around how the city responds to that and what what are we looking at how the city responds to our own finances do you mean just to clarify yes to to a time where sales tax and transient occupants all those taxes that the city relies on are are declining it leaves a rather you know gaping deficit and so how will the city be continue to navigate that and you may not know at this point and so but I'm just trying to get a beat on where we are right now. Yeah so initially we did we just had our budget and we had an adjustment to the budget because of that exact for that exact reason right we have a pretty good roadmap I think going forward we did ask the labor we unions to negotiate around furloughs so that we wouldn't have to lay people off and and so I think that currently we came into the situation in a good place and that is very very helpful now we've always we since the last recession we've been very fiscally frugal and you know working on basically the same amount of staff that that we've had for for many years now even though the population has increased in the city and so we we're already working very very lean from a very lean uh place and we really won't know until we get the report out from like how much have have we lost and when we you know ran the numbers and did the budget we didn't know that um but we will pretty soon yeah. So what's it like for the the council experience and even for for city staff to to work on all of these big issues virtually and and there we all talk a lot about zoom these days and doing you know life on zoom and business on zoom but what's it been like to manage the process of of public meetings that way? So I think initially it was very counterintuitive and very um very sort of dehumanizing in in a way I am a very social person and so I've never liked doing things over video um and there are a lot of cues you get from being in a room with people that we absolutely do not have especially at the city council meeting when you've got a room full of people and you can kind of feel where the conversation is going and you get like I said you get a lot of feedback from that and so that is that has been a big adjustment I think that now that we've been doing zoom for about what has it been three four months it feels a little more I wouldn't say natural because it never feels natural but uh just something that we are more definitely used to um and they and I will say that at least it has increased the efficiency of not having to drive somewhere and then you know sometimes you drive and only have a 15 20 minute meeting and that is not um and that's not uh a good use of time and so in some respects this is better but like the other night the city council meeting went until about 130 and we had started with a closed session at five and so basically we were on zoom for uh eight hours and that that's really wearing I mean it's wearing either way but when you're doing it electronically for some reason it is it's harder yeah I think our brains aren't aren't wired to uh to to deal with that kind of interface long term I'm experiencing it myself too so I wanted to make sure we give you some time to talk about what your priorities are moving forward in your first term as mayor I acknowledged up front that you know you stepped into this leadership role at at a really really interesting time we are living in interesting times right now um so what are what are some of your thoughts on what you'd like to accomplish in in the months and years ahead the year ahead so I definitely have had to rethink that a little bit with the COVID because you know coming in when I was elected there were there was a list of things that I felt were a priority and now it feels like that list has been hijacked um by just trying to survive the next year or two as we're trying to stay in a good place uh through this COVID crisis and I think that I still would like to for our focus to be on community and economic development I'm really hopeful that the disc project will um you know be received as a positive thing in the community because I think that that can be that can move us into a place that would be really good for us for a long time um and you know for me parks and rec and young people putting some effort and resources into that area has always been uh something that I wanted to push forward and actually with the conversations around uh reallocation of resources around the police it's a natural fit for that for that focus okay well it's going to be very interesting to see how things continue under COVID and how long we're in this situation so any parting thoughts we are almost out of time I told you this goes quickly and it has um anything you'd like to to leave us with um I would like to leave us with the thought to stay hopeful and stay healthy and to continue to reach out to each other as community members and I'm really grateful to Davis Media Access and to all of our nonprofits in town that continue to fill in the gaps I mean they they did a great job of filling in the gaps for services and for needs of the community before the pandemic I think they're going to be just as important uh during the pandemic and hopefully we will see uh everybody come out of this um on top okay I want to thank you again for joining us today and for your service on the council I know the council has a brief respite coming up a little bit of downtime before you swing back into action in august and take on university commons and all the other issues so thanks so much for joining us gloria thank you thank you again this has been the city considers from the virtual Davis Media Access Studio I'm autumn love a reno be sure to check out all our programming online at dctv.davismedia.org watch it live on Comcast channel 15 and check out our youtube channel thanks so much