Davis Vanguard Questions

Every week, the Davis Vanguard has been asking the District 2 Candidates (the only contested council election this year) one question.  They are asked to limit their response to 350 words.

Question 1: If elected, what key issue would you most like to address—
please explain why you chose that issue and how you would address it.

When I talk to fellow Davisites across the city and across different ages, one issue constantly rises to the top: housing. The scarcity and high cost of both ownership and renting in Davis has a pervasive impact on every level of our community and connects to other issues important to Davis voters: climate, open spaces, schools, the unhoused, and more.

I have been a teacher in Davis for 11 years, and am serving my third term as President of Davis Teachers Association. I have seen how our lack of available and affordable housing has affected students’ and teachers’ families alike. Young families just starting out have to buy in Woodland, West Sacramento, or Sacramento. Renter families can’t save enough to transition to becoming homeowners. Seniors can’t afford to downsize and struggle with their family-sized homes as they age. UC Davis students struggle to stay housed while they get their degrees, then can’t settle here after graduation even if they wish to.

This affects the tax base that funds our schools as well as city services that so many Davis residents want, such as road repair and maintenance of our parks and greenbelts. It also has climate and traffic impacts, as children are more likely driven to school since they can’t live within walking or biking distances. And it harms our local businesses as their client base shrinks and rents rise, forcing those businesses to close.

While we have struggled to gain voter approval for housing developments in the past, I believe the dire situation is pushing voters to shift attitudes. My background in community advocacy with DTA and the Davis Community Action Network—which seeks to find affordable and climate-smart housing solutions—can make the difference. I plan to draw on my skills in organizing, community engagement, and communication, to work towards greater consensus and progress on more missing middle housing, infill projects, and responsible peripheral growth.

I pledge to bring this same grit and persistence to the Davis City Council as I have as a teacher and a union president, delivering results for our city as I have for our schools.

Certain basic, quality-of-life problems in Davis can no longer be ignored or deferred, but demand an immediate fix. For that reason, I support Measure Q. Ask the kids that bike to school, ask the walking groups on our greenbelts, ask your neighbors about potholes in our local streets: our roads and paths present daily hazards, and our city has a responsibility to repair them in a timely fashion.

We identified a clear need for additional revenue for infrastructure in 2018 when the city put forth a special tax specifically for street and bike path maintenance. In the wake of the pandemic, construction costs have risen and the state of our roads and paths worsened. Passing Measure Q now will allow us to make repairs sooner and save long term costs.

The financial stability and sustainability of our city is paramount. We must continue to offer critical services such as emergency response and public safety, and to provide the support programs for our residents by addressing homelessness and investment in affordable housing, plus we must repair and maintain our infrastructure, including our bike paths and parks. The Downtown Davis Business Association supports Measure Q because our local businesses need more services to maintain the attractiveness of our downtown. Woodland, West Sacramento, and Winters have all placed identical taxes on the ballot, demonstrating that these fiscal challenges are not Davis-specific, but are shared by municipalities regionally.

I share a concern some Davisites have expressed that the tax is regressive, affecting our working-class residents more proportionally to their income; however, Measure Q is structured to support greater accessibility and economic opportunity for these residents and their families by investing in the housing trust fund.

Measure Q will not be a cure-all for these issues. We need to cultivate economic development and grow our tax-base to ensure our city’s revenue will keep up with demand for services. I intend to find innovative solutions, in collaboration with the UC, our businesses, and local non-profits, to address our changing economy so our city will not simply survive, but thrive into the future.

We are incredibly lucky in Davis to have a wide range of expertise at our disposal, thanks in no small part to being a university town. One place where this benefit is clearly visible is our commissions, which have been an amazing resource that is critical to ongoing community outreach and engagement.

Understandably, the greater demands on peoples’ time that many of us experience lead to challenges with reaching quorums, and meetings under the Brown Act place limitations on open discussions with engaged residents around city issues. Additionally, council members have struggled to attend all of the commission meetings in addition to their obligations to Joint Powers boards, 2x2s, and other community events in their impacted schedules. This has resulted in uneven efficacy and consistency, as well as hampered communication with city staff across the commissions and limited public participation.

Councilmembers initiated the consolidation of our commissions to alleviate these problems and make commission work more efficient, and thus honor people’s work and time. Process matters, however, and some feel the shift was not well articulated or that enough time was given to properly provide feedback, while also raising concerns about the agenda-setting processes currently under discussion.

Commissions must continue to help expand public engagement by filtering advice and feedback upwards through a well-defined and transparent process to aid in decision-making. This is especially true as we progress with the city’s General Plan, where public input and participation on the newly aligned commission goals will be crucial.

I learned as President of DTA that it’s critical to gather input from members before making decisions that affect all, because teachers know best what is happening in their classrooms and on their school campuses. Additionally, this must be a multi-step process of outreach that goes beyond simply holding a meeting or conducting a survey. I believe we can balance our need for greater efficiency in our system of commissions while also ensuring that we retain the valuable input they provide and continuing to develop other avenues for public participation that are more accessible and authentic.

Anyone who has watched a city council meeting knows communication between elected officials and their constituents can get contentious. However, I am uniquely prepared to handle this: I spend every working day with junior-high kids.

In all seriousness, communication is a crucial skill for an educator and a union leader. Whether to Board Trustees, fellow educators, or my US History students, I need to convey information, construct a clear analysis, and outline the steps from planning to finished product.

Many of the recent breakdowns in trust between the city council and Davis residents can be attributed to incomplete or uncompleted communication—that is, giving too little information to understand what is happening, or having the communication fall short of reaching the audience.

Leadership has taught me that if you build it, they will not come. Rather than expecting my audience to come to me, I need to step forward and meet my audience where they are.

As DTA President, I visit school sites so I can understand the full context of teachers’ experiences. As an active board member of the Davis Community Action Network, I participate in numerous listening sessions, in person and over Zoom, each planned to be accessible to our targeted audience. But often, I find the most meaningful information in casual encounters: running into neighbors at the grocery store, chatting with school parents at the Farmers Market, or striking up a conversation at a community event.

I will maintain a flow of communication between Davis residents and myself as their representative by formalizing these types of interactions. Campaign Meet & Greets have been very informative, and I would like to continue similar events to promote dialogue if elected. Leveraging social media in my campaign has helped me reach my audience, but also helps keep me informed about what is happening in our community and how people feel. I’m inspired by Jenny Tan’s video series and would like to do something similar for my constituents.

Above all, as a teacher and an organizer, I believe that being accessible and listening to the community will always yield the best results.

When I decided to run for city council, I made housing a central part of my campaign because I have seen families and teachers struggle with housing for years, and as a volunteer with the Interfaith Rotating Winter Shelter I learned of the personal experiences of our unhoused neighbors. Ultimately, we know the best solution to the unhoused is to house them, so providing more housing and resources to stay housed is part of a holistic strategy of ending homelessness.

Unfortunately, housing insecurity has become more widespread in the 21st century. It is not some tragedy that strikes only the poorest among us: those with no family safety net, those with severe and untreated mental illness or addiction. It impacts the healthy and employed as well. In Yolo County, 40 percent of residents are just one paycheck from becoming housing insecure. This includes residents and families from our farm and food service workers to UC Davis graduate students.

Our first strategy in dealing with homelessness must be prevention. For renters, this can mean providing temporary rental assistance during financial setbacks via our Housing Trust Fund, implementing our renters resources programs with greater efficacy, and expanding our support for programs such as STEAC and Empower Yolo. When the city offers appointments for housing support, these fill up immediately. I would also like to increase this service to meet demand, especially for our Spanish-speaking neighbors.

For those who are already unhoused, our city has worked hard in recent years to have many tools at our disposal. The Department of Social Services and Housing was established to take some of the responsibilities for responding to issues with the unhoused; however, the demands on staff time and availability of resources must be augmented in order to make progress towards effectively providing services to our unhoused neighbors, and mitigating tensions with residents and business owners. Paul’s Place is an example of many interested parties joining forces to produce real results. I see a need to better coordinate all the pieces we have—government and nonprofits—to force-multiply existing efforts and improve the coverage of services.

Strong schools—from UC Davis to our T/K–12 public schools—have always been central to Davis’s identity. We pride ourselves on being a community that values high quality public education for all. Many families moved here specifically for our schools and because Davis is a wonderful city for raising kids.

Our interests as a city, therefore, are deeply intertwined with schools. I have experienced Davis as a university student, a teacher, and a step-parent with kids in our district, so I have a well-rounded perspective on this overlap. As DTA President, I have been directly involved in conversations about declining enrollment, problem-solving to avoid closing any of our campuses, pursuing solutions for workforce housing for DJUSD teachers and staff, and the challenges our school families face staying in-district due to rising housing costs.

The long-term vitality of our district is critical for our community. Our district has an in-boundary declining enrollment of roughly 11% over the past 10 years, much higher than the statewide average of 3%. Much of this decline relates directly to housing availability and cost: causing many families to move out of district. To keep our school district healthy, we need to ensure living in Davis is in reach for families with children—which is the primary reason I decided to run for city council.

I have made housing a central focus of my campaign, and will work to diversify our housing stock to meet different needs and price points to make housing more accessible for all people, especially young families. We need to keep our students’ families local so children can bike to school for the health of our kids and the planet, and so we can help our grown children return to Davis and rejoin our community.

If elected to city council, I already grasp all the issues at stake. As a board member of the Davis Community Action Network, with its mission of affordable and climate-conscious housing, I have already discussed this issue with residents, developers, and housing experts, and I have researched solutions other cities are putting into action. I’m ready to get to work.

Most Davisites agree that housing is a top priority for the city of Davis, but consensus often breaks down over the specifics of where to build and what type of housing. Measure J was established to ensure any development would meet a threshold of consensus, but in recent years, some feel it stands in the way of urgently needed additional housing.

Through my work with Davis Community Action Network, I led engagements in our listening sessions on these specifics. Our team met with 200+ people, including students, seniors, families and folks that currently live in Woodland or Winters and commute into town. Measure J came up frequently. Some expressed fears of sprawl if amended, while others felt meeting housing needs should take precedence.

I have been clear in my work and my campaign that we must build housing to address growing demand, but always with climate-smart design and fiscal responsibility as guiding principles. Every development has trade-offs that must be analyzed alongside community input to ensure the best outcomes for our city in the long term.

Beyond climate impacts, expanding our city through J/R/D developments also includes important infrastructure considerations such as water, emergency services, traffic and transportation needs, and road maintenance costs. Each design must have these elements balanced with the benefit provided by expanding housing access to those in need, whether that person is a senior who wishes to downsize, or a young couple looking for their first home, or a family bringing new students into DJUSD.

If elected to represent District 2, I would want to hear more from my neighbors about their ideas to address the housing shortage within a shared vision for the city. Luckily, the city is about to embark on a General Plan process that would do just that, and will need to establish community goals, which must include how we wish to address peripheral growth.

Until the community wants to place Measure J/R/D on the table for amendment, we must recommit to fully engaging and educating voters with upcoming projects that may be subject to J/R/D.