Misunderestimated

None of our three transplant business leaders made the Town Council. The existing leadership had a much greater ability to guide votes to candidates within their comfort zone than most people expected. Voter turnout quadrupled over last election, presumably because this was a year when several of the council candidates were not the mayor's or existing town council members' picks....The base was energized.

There is definitely a bright line now drawn between traditional locals and transplant locals. Traditionals tend to have lower levels of post-high school education, tend to work in labor professions, and have longer histories in the immediate area. The pro-change set tend to have more education, have lived in urban centers previously and have lived in Davis for years perhaps, but not for generations. This election marked the brightening of that line between the two groups...a greater awareness of the steady changeover of the population from a dwindling, post-mining, labor-led market to a growing service/hospitality/retail-led market that generates service and labor jobs, and which because of its allure, becomes a desirable relocation destination for retirees and small geographically independent businesses.

This defeat will energize the more progressive citizenry of Davis to get busy in a civic sense...to attend Council meetings, to understand the town's issues first hand, to know the ordinances and legal issues for residents, to understand how roads and sidewalks get paved and plowed, to understand the facts bearing on better sewage for the city, to understand these issues from their authoritative sources and to then form considered opinions about how this town's governance should progress.

Yes that may be asking for alot more homework than the old guard may have done. But alas, change is not 10% better than no change; it is at least 3X, because that's the only way old ways can change. Take a look at the before and after picture for our White House. I'd say we're talking at least 5X better; and that's what it took to make real change occur.

Now let's get busy and make Davis the mountain life style treasure that it is destined to become.