I Don't Want Davis to Change. That's Why I'm Voting Yes on Measure V.

I want to be honest with you from the start. I am not a pro-development person. I did not grow up wanting more housing in Davis. I grew up wanting Davis to stay exactly the way it was.

I want the Davis of Montgomery Elementary School, where I learned to read. The Davis of Harper Junior High, where I figured out who I was and who I wanted to be. The Davis I graduated from in the 2010s at Davis Senior High, where friendships formed over bike rides and greenbelt runs and summer evenings that felt like they would last forever. That is the Davis I love, the one living rent-free in my memory, the one I compare every other place I've ever been against.

And here is what I know about that Davis: it was made possible, in large part, because people chose to invest in it. Because schools were funded. Because families could afford to stay. Because children filled the classrooms and the playgrounds and the bike paths. Because the city had enough people and enough resources to maintain what makes it special.

I left Davis for six years. I moved to Knoxville, Tennessee, to compete in the pole vault at the University of Tennesssee and study psychology and biology. I saw a different world — places where people talked about community but experienced very little of it, where cities grew without intention or care, where the word "planning" was often just a euphemism for exclusion. And every single day I was gone, I thought about Davis. About coming home.

When I did come back, I came back to serve. I now help run a long-term mental health rehabilitation facility on the outskirts of town. I work with people rebuilding their lives, often from scratch, people who need stability and community and a place that feels safe. And I live in the city I love, doing work I believe in, deeply grateful to call this place home.

But the Davis I came home to is not the Davis I left. Not entirely. And it is changing faster than I am comfortable with and in ways that frighten me.

Fear Is Honest. I Have It Too.

I want to say this directly to the people opposing Measure V: I understand you. Not as a political strategy. I genuinely understand you.

When I see new apartment complexes going up that feel soulless, or shopping centers like the one on Russell that look like they were copy-pasted from Sacramento, I feel what you feel. This is not what Davis is supposed to look like. This is not the Davis of meandering bike paths and century-old oaks and neighbors who actually know each other. I have stood in parking lots of new developments and felt a strange grief — the grief of watching something irreplaceable become something ordinary.

I support Measure J/R/D. Deeply. The idea that Davis residents get a say in major land use decisions, that you cannot simply develop open space and farmland without coming to the community for a vote — that is one of the most important things about living here. It is a protection most cities in California would envy.

And so when I tell you I am voting Yes on Measure V, I want you to hear it not as the cheerful enthusiasm of someone who has made peace with sprawl or has financial interests. I want you to hear it as someone who has wrestled with this, who has read the documents and the op-eds and the objections, who has sat with real discomfort about what this vote means, and arrived, slowly and with some sadness, at a different conclusion than you.

Because I believe the Davis we are trying to protect is already slipping away. And I believe that voting No on Measure V will not save it. I think, if anything, it will accelerate exactly the kind of change we both fear most.

The Schools Break My Heart

I need to talk about Patwin Elementary and Birch Lane.

These are not abstract institutions to me. Schools like them are the connective tissue of a community like ours. They are where children learn and where neighborhoods form. They are where Davis, as an idea, gets passed from one generation to the next. The thought of them closing, of the laughter leaving those classrooms, of the flags coming down, of the buildings sitting empty, genuinely breaks my heart.

I want to be fair about the politics here. I was not at the City Council meetings where this was discussed. I do not know the exact language used, and I am wary of the framing that Council somehow "threatened" closure to manufacture a yes vote. That framing feels uncharitable and probably wrong. What I do know is this: declining enrollment is real, the math is real, and the trajectory is real. The Davis Joint Unified School District is facing a genuine enrollment gap, with over a thousand students currently commuting in from surrounding communities to fill classrooms that local kids no longer occupy, because local kids' families could not afford to stay.

That last part is the part that should haunt us.

The families who would have raised the next generation of Davis kids (teachers, nurses, graduate students, and young professionals) did not all leave because they wanted to. Many of them left because they could not afford to stay. Because the housing supply in Davis has been strangled for decades, and the consequence is that the people who want to be Davisites, who would love Davis the way I love it, are being priced into Woodland and Vacaville and Sacramento and long commutes they did not choose.

Will Village Farms save Patwin? I honestly do not know. I am not going to promise you something I cannot guarantee. What I can tell you is that 1,800 new households, designed to attract families — including 70% of market-rate units built as townhomes, duplexes, and smaller homes specifically intended for first-time buyers and younger families — represents the most meaningful infusion of potential enrollment Davis has seen in a generation. DJUSD estimates the project could bring over 1,100 new students. And without something like Village Farms, I fear Patwin and Birch Lane's closure is not a possibility. It is a near certainty.

I do not want to watch that happen. I do not want to tell the children of those schools that Davis chose to protect its open views over their classrooms. That is not the Davis I grew up in, either.

I've Read the Opposition Arguments. Carefully.

I respect the people raising concerns about Village Farms. I want to address them honestly, because I think this community deserves honesty more than it deserves campaign talking points from either side.

On contaminants and PFAS: This is the opposition argument that deserves the most serious hearing. There are credentialed scientists — a certified hydrogeologist, an emeritus professor of chemical engineering, a retired air pollution specialist — who have raised legitimate questions about PFAS contamination in shallow groundwater near the Old Davis Landfill, and whether the proposed drainage channel design adequately addresses that risk. They have also noted that dioxins and furans from the landfill's historical burn pits were not analyzed at a level of concern during the EIR process. These are not fringe claims from people who simply oppose change. They are technical objections from people with expertise.

I am not an environmental scientist. I cannot evaluate their hydrogeological models. What I can tell you is that the EIR — a state-regulated process that in this case produced thousands of pages of independent analysis — concluded that the development does not pose unreasonable human health risks to future residents. The Central Valley Regional Water Quality Control Board determined there is no risk to future residents from the organic contaminants previously identified. The Yes on V side and the No on V side have credentialed people making different claims. I have weighed that, and I find the EIR's conclusions more comprehensive and more authoritative than op-eds on either side, including this one. But I understand why some of you do not trust that. I understand why, in an era of regulatory capture and developer-friendly politics, you look at a government-approved document and wonder whose interests it actually serves.

All I can say is: I have read the summary on the City Council website. And I do not believe it is dishonest. I believe the contaminant risks, while not zero, are manageable and monitored, and I believe they do not approach the level that would justify walking away from what this project offers.

On affordable housing guarantees: This is a legitimate critique and I will not pretend otherwise. The Baseline Features guarantee that construction of at least 100 lower-income deed-restricted affordable units begins before or concurrent with the delivery of the 150th market-rate unit. The language in the Development Agreement does contain a clause that says if the City determines construction of those 100 units is "infeasible for any reason," the City "may elect to request" the developer to construct them. That language is weak. Critics are right that it is weak. I wish it were stronger.

What I will also say is this: the overall affordable housing package — 16 acres of land donated, $6 million contributed toward construction, 20% of total units targeted as deed-restricted affordable — is, by any measure, the most substantial affordable housing commitment in Davis history. Is it ironclad? No. Is the concern that a future City Council might not enforce it forcefully a real one? Yes. But the alternative — voting no, getting no new housing, and continuing to watch working families get priced out of a city that supposedly values diversity — does not actually protect affordable housing either. It just ensures less of it, forever.

On traffic: I want to check my privilege here, and I mean that sincerely. My first year back in Davis, I was genuinely upset about the increased traffic I encountered. I felt wronged. I felt like the Davis I returned to had been given away while I was gone. And then I caught myself. I was livid about waiting an extra cycle at a traffic light. In a city where I can bike to almost anywhere I need to go. In a city with greenbelt paths and tree-lined bike lanes and a culture built around not needing a car for most of daily life. The fears about traffic on Pole Line and Covell are the same fears people raised about the Cannery neighborhood, and the Cannery has not turned Covell into gridlock. Yes, the roads near Village Farms will carry more cars. Yes, some trips will take a few minutes longer. That is real. It is also, in the context of what Davis residents experience compared to most Californians, an incredibly small price to pay for what the city gains. And it is worth noting that the project funds meaningful traffic improvements — signal coordination on Covell, intersection upgrades, transit infrastructure — as part of its commitment.

What Davis Actually Looks Like When It's at Its Best

My father told me something when I was young that has stayed with me. He said Davis was designed to be diverse. Not to accumulate poverty in one corner and wealth in another, but to mix them, to put affordable housing next to market-rate housing, to give every child access to the same streets and parks and schools regardless of what their parents earned.

When I was a kid, an affordable housing development was built behind my house. I remember neighbors on our street opposing it vocally. I remember the signs, the meetings, the fear — the sense that something precious was about to be ruined. And then it was built, and then years passed, and then I grew up going to school with the children who lived there, riding bikes with them in the greenbelt, sharing lunch tables and sports teams and the ordinary texture of a childhood.

That is what Davis looks like when it is at its best. Not an insulated enclave of people who got here first and pulled up the ladder. A community. A real one.

Village Farms, as designed, reflects Davis values in ways that other recent developments have not. It is 100% all-electric, no natural gas, with solar on every single-family home. It will plant 4,000 new trees. It will preserve a 47-acre natural habitat area — permanently — through an endowed conservation fund. It will complete the Davis Bike Loop, connecting Northstar Park to Wildhorse with grade-separated crossings that require another public vote to remove. It will include an educational farm and a pre-K learning center, dedicated to DJUSD. It will have parks and greenbelts and multi-use trails woven through it. And two-thirds of its market-rate housing will be townhomes and duplexes and smaller homes — the "missing middle" that makes homeownership possible for the teacher, the nurse, the young family, the first-generation college student who fell in love with this town while at UC Davis and wants to stay.

This is not a generic suburban development. It was designed by people with deep Davis roots, shaped by decades of community planning values, reviewed by a five-member City Council that voted unanimously in its favor. That does not make it perfect. Nothing this complex is perfect. But it makes it, by a significant margin, the most Davis-aligned housing project this community has seen in a very long time.

The Change We Fear Is Already Happening

Here is the thing that keeps me up at night, and it is not Village Farms.

Davis is changing without our permission. It is changing because families are leaving. Because schools are losing students. Because the tax base is straining and city infrastructure projects sit unfunded on lists that grow longer every year. Because the culture of a place is not preserved by keeping new people out — it is preserved by ensuring that the people who love it can afford to stay, and that the next generation has enough neighbors to form a community at all.

I have watched the "no" crowd oppose every single housing development I can remember. The Cannery. Various infill projects. Now Village Farms. And I want to ask sincerely: what is the plan? What happens to Davis in ten years if the enrollment keeps dropping and the schools keep closing and the property tax base keeps declining and the city keeps borrowing against a future it cannot fully fund? What is the Davis that looks like on the other side of indefinite resistance?

I am not asking rhetorically. I genuinely want to know, because I do not see it. What I see is a community so attached to what it once was that it is risking the very conditions that made it what it was.

I am not going to call anyone a NIMBY here even if I have online prior. That word has become a weapon, and wielding it forecloses the kind of conversation Davis actually needs. What I will say is that some of the opposition to Village Farms feels more like fear than like analysis. And I understand that fear. I live in it too. I feel it every time I see something built in this city that looks like it could have been built anywhere.

But Village Farms does not look like it could have been built anywhere. It looks like it was designed for here, by people who love here, under a process that gave residents more say than they get almost anywhere else in the state. That is not nothing. That is, in fact, quite a lot.

I Will Hold This Project Accountable

I want to say this plainly: if Village Farms does not deliver what it has promised, I will say so. If the affordable housing commitments get quietly abandoned by a future council, I will fight that. If the developer proves to be untrustworthy, I will call it out. If the environmental monitoring reveals contamination risks that were understated, I will demand accountability.

I am not asking anyone to extend blind trust to a developer or to city government or to any institution. Healthy skepticism is one of the best things about Davis. But healthy skepticism is different from reflexive opposition, and some of what I have seen in this debate has crossed that line.

Measure V is not a blank check. It is a set of Baseline Project Features that are compelling to me. It is a General Plan amendment subject to ongoing oversight. It is the beginning of a long process, not the end of one — and Davis voters will have opportunities to hold the development accountable at multiple stages.

What I am asking is this: weigh the risks of building against the risks of not building. Weigh the uncertain risks of the project against the very certain risks of doing nothing. Weigh the Davis you are afraid of losing against the Davis that is already leaving — the families priced out, the classrooms emptying, the schools on the closure list.

I came home to Davis because I believe in it. I believe it can grow and remain itself. I believe it can absorb new neighbors without losing the character that makes it worth living in. I believe the children who grow up in Village Farms will ride bikes on the same paths I rode, and go to school with kids whose families came from everywhere, and feel what I felt growing up here — that they are lucky beyond measure to call this place home.

That is the Davis I want. And yes, I believe Measure V moves us closer to it.

Vote Yes on Measure V June 2nd.

I have no financial interest in this campaign or development, I am simply a concerned Davisite