Kelsey Fortune for Davis City Council, District 1

I was raised in small town Wisconsin to believe everyone should play an active role in shaping their community. I moved to Davis nine years ago to pursue my PhD in economics, determined to live in accordance with my values for respect, inclusion, and sustainability. I use my bicycle as my main form of transportation and have woven close relationships with a wide variety of people through my involvement in our community. I volunteer my time as the Associate Director of Purple Tree Café and on the Boards of Bike Davis and Cool Davis.

Faced with a climate emergency that threatens to exacerbate already unacceptable levels of inequality and is currently degrading our environment, I believe our diverse and compassionate community is our greatest strength. I see untapped potential for progress and action in the City of Davis. The people and elected leaders who came before us laid the groundwork for a vibrant, sustainable community, and our city government and citizenry can again become an example of an equitable and effective response.

​The city is also faced with an unsustainable budget, a public safety and justice system that does not best serve the people, an extreme dearth of both affordable and dedicated low-income housing, and lack of transparency, effective communication, and action from our City Council. Our children’s future depends on our ability to act now to address these problems.

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My Priorities for Davis

Climate Resilience

We are facing a climate emergency. We must act quickly to limit our impact and create a resilient community which is ready to accommodate locals and climate refugees when faced with extreme weather events. I am of the generation of climate anxiety and uncertainty of my own future because of our lack of action. We must stop giving lip-service to our lofty goal of carbon neutrality by 2040, and begin taking actions. Here are four things I will do on city council.
  • Create an independent climate commission to immediately begin a community led Climate Action and Adaptation Plan update and hold the city accountable for all actions.
  • Push forward the current Climate Action and Adaption Plan incorporating community feedback so we can begin acting as soon as possible.
  • Work with community climate leaders to begin implementation of resilience centers that can be disconnected from the grid and completely powered by renewable energy and storage at our local grocery stores, churches, and schools.
  • Create a city policy that our government stop the use of fossil fuels as quickly as possible. This means that the city should immediately stop purchasing vehicles and equipment that runs on fossil fuels. The city should create incentives for employees to use active and public transportation. The city should create a plan for fuel switching and generating renewable energy.

Community Centered Planning

Our general plan was written in the '90s. This is unacceptable. Our downtown specific plan draft was ready in 2019, but we only just got an environmental impact report (EIR) this summer. This community led project was postponed by the current council in favor of pushing forward peripheral development. If you want to know what to expect from candidate, look at their past actions. I am the only candidate in District 1 that has shown with my actions that I would favor community led planning over developer proposed projects. The most recent example of this was my opposition to Measure H which would've approved the Davis Innovation and Sustainability Campus (DISC) which lost at the ballot box. Both of my opponents were vocal supporters of this project which required exceptions to our general plan, was not supported by the community, and took staff time away from pushing forward the community led downtown specific plan. I will do on the following.
  • ​Pushing forward our Climate Action and Adaptation Plan and Downtown Specific Plan with all possible urgency and community input.
  • Start a new general plan process that focuses on using our commissions, non-profits, and creating community conversation about our vision for Davis' future and how we get there. Both plans mentioned above will play important roles in shaping an update.
  • Work with neighborhoods to decide how they would best like to see their neighborhoods move toward an inclusive and sustainable future.

Fiscal Sustainability

As an economist with experience working on policy, I know how to create a sustainable budget for our city. Here are three things that we can do to improve our fiscal situation.
  • Implement performance based standards for staff. This means creating measures for output that we can compare to costs, so we can get Davisites the best services for our tax dollars.
  • Create sustainable revenue streams. We are far to often chasing the next dollar by approving projects that have one time fees or developments are sold to us as "the solution" to our budgetary woes. The fact of the matter is that a city cannot survive on one time fees, and it is impossible to predict the fiscal impacts of peripheral developments. Yes, a peripheral development could be a net positive to he city budget, but it could also increase city costs of services and maintenance to the point where the opposite is true. Creating revenue using infill development like the downtown plan, accessory dwelling units (ADUs), and other increased density projects is a more sustainable way to fund our city.
  • Creating policies that align incentives to improve our city. For example, a vacancy tax would both create a new stream of revenue and incentivize property owners to search for tenants and offer more favorable terms. 

Economics
My work as an economist primarily focuses on energy, transportation, and climate policy. The project I'm currently finishing focuses on the implementation of means testing in California's Clean Vehicle Rebate Project. "Meaning Testing" is economist speak to simply say that a policy varies for individuals or households based on their income. I utilize the variation in the size of rebates available to estimate the impact of subsidies on electric vehicle adoption. I also discuss the distributional impacts of this government spending. Every decision by a government body impacts people differently, and it's important to consider that with every  policy to make sure that inequitable and regressive policies are offset.

I've included a link to a blog by some of my favorite economists that focuses on explaining energy economics in an accessible way. Check it out!

Empowering our Community

One of the struggle I see within the city of Davis is a lack of collaboration and communication between staff, council, and the public. Public comment in meetings is often met with ambivalence or defensiveness and often seems unproductive. I have experienced this personally and as a board member of Bike Davis. We felt unheard, ignored, and frustrated while doing or best to help the community. In the past year, Bike Davis has had a break through in the way we work with the city. Rather than acting in response to staff and council in public meetings, we’ve cultivated a proactive working relationship with staff that allows us to be involved earlier in the process. It began with a temporary redesign of 5th St. between L St. and Poleline after the sewer work was completed last year.

The city’s original plan was to stripe 5th St. back to exactly how it was before the sewer work with two traffic lanes in each direction and no dedicated bicycle infrastructure. It has been in the city’s plan for many years to add bike lanes, so Bike Davis hired a consultant to redesign this section of the street. We presented the redesign to city staff as an alternative to re-striping without an updated design. Because they needed to re-stripe either was, the cost difference to implementing our updated design was minimal, and staff agreed. Before this was a very stressful place to bike as it required taking the lane or moving on to a narrow and not will marked multi-use path. Now this section of road is one of the most comfortable and low stress places to bike in all of town. 

Since this collaboration, Bike Davis has been regularly meeting with city staff, so that we can assist each other in creating safe, human friendly infrastructure.

Ojai is making waves.
​Davis can too.

In a ballot measure which would allow for the elimination of city districting, Ojai City Council has also become, to my knowledge, the first general law city in California to pursue ranked choice voting. It would probably not make sense for Ojai, a community of around 7,500 people, to become a charter city, but they are still doing what they can to pursue a democratic process that best represents the community.

​We must get creative.

We must ask the hard questions.

We must pursue the best for our community.
Shall the voters authorize, at the discretion of the City Council, the use of ranked choice voting, also known as instant runoff voting and allowing voters to rank candidates for elected office in order of preference, to elect City offices at-large, thereby amending the Ojai Municipal Code to no longer elect City Council members by district, if the City Council implements it starting with the November 2024 general election?

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​Fortune for Davis City Council 2022