Because I don't want to loose this article

This was published in 2007 and I applaude the effort that went into this article. As a resident of this two-faced town, Thank you Daniel

http://www.sacbee.com/weintraub/story/283946.html

Daniel Weintraub: Liberal town?
Davis is white, wealthy and conservative
Sacramento Bee Sunday, July 22, 2007

When Helen Thomson's daughter went looking for housing a few years ago in her native Davis, the cheapest thing she could find was a half-million-dollar fixer-upper.

The home reeked from the smell of too many cats, and the floors sloped. "If you dropped a marble at the front door," Thomson says, "it would roll through the house and into the back yard." Her daughter settled for a house in West Sacramento instead.

Thomson, a Yolo County supervisor and Davis resident since 1965, says her family's story was typical.

"I've talked to a lot of people whose kids have tried to come back to the town they grew up in," she says. "They're not making it."

Thomson thinks the answer is to build more housing. But in Davis, that idea is enough to get you run out of town. Thomson ought to know. Just saying she would consider rezoning some farmland for homes has prompted anti-growth activists to threaten to recall her from office.

But even Thomson, a moderate by Davis standards, wouldn't support exploring a creative proposal put forward last week by Sacramento's biggest developer, Angelo K. Tsakopoulos, and the president of the state's stem cell institute, Robert Klein.

Tsakopoulos and his family own about 1,500 acres of farmland just east of the Davis city limits and south of Interstate 80. He proposed building houses on some of that land and then donating 60 percent of the proceeds to a nonprofit foundation that would build a research center for scientists looking to turn their stem cell discoveries into therapies that could cure disease.

Tsakopoulos, a major player in Democratic politics, has made a habit of buying up farmland or other open space and then trying to pressure local officials to rezone the land for housing in combination with some other strategy. In Sacramento, it was a new arena for the NBA's Kings. In Placer County, it was a private university.

Klein, a Silicon Valley millionaire who was the driving force behind Proposition 71, the stem cell bond voters approved in 2004, is hoping to run the new foundation. While his commitment to turning stem cell research into effective therapies is impressive, Klein's dual roles as president of the state stem cell board and head of a nascent foundation to turn those discoveries into profit-making medical inventions would be a conflict.

But their idea had merit. Davis, as a hub for biotech research, is as good a place as any to host the kind of center Klein is proposing. And the land Tsakopoulos was offering, while not ideal for the project, was certainly worth considering. It is adjacent to I-80, contiguous to existing development and four miles from the campus at the University of California, Davis.

Tsakopoulos proposed dedicating a portion of his land as a permanent buffer for a nearby wildlife refuge and setting aside two acres for every acre of farmland developed in the project.

None of that, however, was enough to persuade the Yolo County supervisors to even study the idea. After angry protests from Davis leaders, including recall threats against Thomson and fellow supervisor Mariko Yamada, the supervisors left the land off a list of parcels they wanted to consider for future development.

William Kopper, an environmental attorney and former Davis mayor, told The Bee the two supervisors never would have been elected had they told voters they were open to more development.

"Their conduct is a breach of trust with the voters," he said.

In the end, Thomson and Yamada said they were intrigued by the concept but could not support housing on the land Tsakopoulos owns. One reason: the need to protect prime farmland.

But they were talking here about 1,500 acres next to a major freeway and existing urban development. Yolo County currently has 550,000 acres zoned for agriculture, and 64 percent of the county's acreage is owned by farmers who get tax breaks in exchange for keeping their land free from development. The place is hardly in danger of being overrun.

Davis has a reputation as a liberal bastion. But the city is truly conservative, fighting change with every ounce of its political body. While the rest of California becomes more ethnically and economically diverse, Davis remains a mostly white enclave for wealthy, highly educated people.

The city is 70 percent white and 17 percent Asian American, but fewer than 3 percent of its residents are African American and only about 10 percent are Latino. Nearly 70 percent of its adult residents have college degrees, and more than a third have graduate degrees. The median family income of $74,000 at the last census was 50 percent higher than the national figure, and the median selling price for houses sold in June was about $550,000.

The children who grow up in Davis cannot afford to live in town once they leave their parents' homes, but their parents refuse to consider just about any project to build more houses. Anyone lucky enough to get a job in the city has to live elsewhere and commute in, causing more traffic congestion, smog and global warming. Wonderful.