Chamber of Commerce to Host City Council Debate

With five candidates competing for three city council seats in the June election, the Davis Chamber of Commerce announced that it will host the first debate of the election season on Thursday, March 29. 

It will take at the City Hall Chambers from 6:30-8 p.m and will feature incumbents Stephen Souza, Sue Greenwald and Dan Wolk as well as Lucas Frerichs and Brett Lee. Given the Chambers role, it will dive deep into economic isssues currently facing Davis. 

Davis Patch will be there live blogging the debate.

The Chamber, which has had a Political Action Committee to support or oppose ballot measures since 1997, recently had its guidelines modified so that it may now support candidates. Here’s a bit of what Chamber Director Kemble Pope had to say in a release Thursday: 

Like communities across the globe dealing with the economic recession, our community has been through a very difficult period of adjustment in the past five years.  Our schools and city are confronted with significant structural budget deficits.  The Davis Joint Unified School District and City of Davis have cut a number of services affecting our quality of life with talk of more service cuts still to come. 

 Parcel tax measures and fee increases have been implemented with yet more proposals under consideration to fund remaining services.  Deferred maintenance on streets, water, and other vital infrastructure continue to accrue with no clear strategy to address these deficits threatening to further degrade our quality of life.  Yet many community opinion makers insist that we must maintain the status quo and abdicate our collective responsibility to effectively address these challenges to our quality of life.  The Chamber PAC believes that our community and elected officials must take a more proactive role in this time of uncertainty.

The Davis Chamber of Commerce does not relish engaging in local politics; it would much rather focus on policy, projects, and job creation to improve our quality of life.  However, it would be irresponsible not to act.  “Business as usual” is no longer a viable course of action.  It is imperative that the Davis community has political leadership capable of fostering a community that is not only socially and environmentally sustainable, but also economically sustainable.

Our community deserves elected officials and government staff who are willing and able to work constructively with community organizations and private industry to find solutions for today’s problems.

We intend on mobilizing our resources to encourage our community to support or oppose ballot measures and elect a city council that will focus on already identified community challenges, craft effective strategies to meet them, and execute those strategies in a timely fashion. 

The Chamber PAC has been charged with:

• Crafting and executing electoral strategies that result in improvement of our members economic vitality and the quality of life for the entire community.
• Interviewing all council candidates in a debate conducive to properly assessing their grasp of economic matters and the critical role a robust local economy has in fostering a sustainable community.
• Considering recommendation and possible support of a council candidate or slate of candidates that support the mission of the Chamber.
• Raising funds to support PAC activities.
• Forming a broad-based, business community coalition to support these efforts.

These efforts are not intended to start and end with the June election.  Rather, these efforts shall be ongoing to ensure we do not lose sight of the critical importance a robust, local economy has in sustaining the well being of the community.  

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