What Joe didn't win, August 2010

What follows is an email written by Jon Li. Mr. Li titled it, "What Joe didn't win, August 2010."

The New Davis City Council
Hysterical Historical Context
The first thing to understand is that it was never about Mayor Ruth.
Ruth’s time as Mayor was collateral damage.
Don Saylor and Sue Greenwald are at about 99.9998% on the dis-like scale.
The friction between Greenwald and Saylor has always been the definition of council dynamics, with Mayor Asmundson attempting to referee, and Lamar Haystek and Stephen Souza being content to share the limelight. Saylor would regularly lob some calculated bomb Sue’s way, and entirely too often it would hit a sensitive nerve somewhere in her unbalanced explosive psyche, and she would blow a fuse.

The blow up between Mayor Ruth and Greenwald on January 26th was only the latest flare-up. As Greenwald ally Mark Siegler pointed out two days later, Sue was the way she always is. Defending her right to speak, as though she had not just lost the vote. In this case, the Mayor didn’t respond to her about something she claimed she had said in closed session – the Mayor’s agreement would also have joined Sue in violating legally bound confidentiality – and the Mayor was stunned speechless. Impatiently, Sue called the Mayor “a liar” and demanded satisfaction. The Mayor fell apart.

Five years ago, as Asmundson was completing her first year as The Mayor and still on her honeymoon, she announced to her four daughters that she was so content with her life that she didn’t have anything to give up for Lent. In shocked unison, all four said, “Sue Greenwald.”

A year ago, I recommended that Mayor Ruth trade places with Mayor Pro Tem Saylor, so that he would have to campaign for Supervisor while actually managing Greenwald’s outbursts, rather than just initiating them and then watching the fun from the sidelines. I hypothesized that the Saylor-initiated outbursts would diminish because Saylor would then be responsible for dealing with the consequences. Now that he is finally Mayor, we get to see.

The over-riding issue with the Davis city council is making it work at all. Greenwald is so negative and argumentative that each council in the past decade has been noted for its antagonism and lack of accomplishment. Don Saylor has nothing to show for his time in city “service” except self-promotion. At least with now-Judge Dave Rosenberg (as a city council member, mayor and then county supervisor) you knew that he would get the credit, but it was actually for something.

The single biggest impact of Jon Li’s candidacy for city council was the Enterprise story at the end of the campaign re-stating the potential idea of recalling Greenwald. Having that over her head lowers her hubris significantly (but not completely) and gives her allies leverage to request that Greenwald tone down her histrionics.

Saylor is not going to make it easy for Greenwald to survive his six months of mayoral manipulation. He deeply resented her for his second place finish behind her in 2004, has coveted the Mayor position for a long time, and he is going to try to make the most of it, maybe trying to institute some new procedures that go down in history with his name on it. And Saylor wants to lock in city-county relations so that he can retain influence in Davis when he moves to the county board of supervisors.

For the record, over the past 14 years, sometimes Sue Greenwald has had something useful to say, but most of it is counterproductive. Andy Warhol talked about 15 minutes of fame. Sue has had the spotlight for 10 years, and has very little positive to show for it. She actually believes her responsible role in politics is to stop things: the dis-art of making things impossible. She keeps demanding that we listen to whatever she happens to want to talk about next, and there is very rarely an end to her sentences, let alone a satisfactory conclusion. The downtown would be at least as successful if she hadn’t said anything in ten years.

Clean Slate with a new Team
The internal dynamic of the new council is going to have to evolve. They do not have any established relationships – Don and Stephen have gamed each other a lot over the past six years, and no one has ever had a working relationship with Sue. New and old council members want to probe each other, exploring about specific policies, or following up on a chance phrase. While Joe and Rochelle each gained Sue’s endorsement for the election, and they have each maintained communication with her, she doesn’t actually want anything except to be paid attention to, and her motions seconded and supported. She doesn’t actually want to accomplish anything more than to be the center of attention, so Joe and Rochelle will find meeting with Sue to be a generally unproductive for achieving tangible results. Sue has certain pet themes, like the PG&E property (leaving out the $80 million replacement price tag), and most of them are things that will never happen in a million years. The second time she brings one up, you recognize the broken record…..

The state meeting rule, called the Brown Act, makes council intercommunication weird because the law prohibits majority interpersonal communication outside of properly noticed meetings. With a five member city council, that means that between meetings, two but no more can actually interact and explore ideas about a particular policy area: communicate, caucus, and strategize. Two particular members regularly talking during the week become known as Brown Buddies. On some issues, Asmundson and Saylor were Brown Buddies for six years. The Davis council tradition is to use the Brown Act as an excuse to cut off the conversation when a council member picks up the phone and it is Greenwald: Oh, I have already discussed that issue with another council member. Sorry.

Ruth was the integral glue to the social fabric of the council experience of the always contentious Saylor, Souza and Greenwald. They have battled under her maternal good will for six years, and now they have to learn to get along without her. So nothing is clearly defined as an ongoing primary interpersonal relationship – something so automatic that the other council members presume they have already talked about the new issue. This council is really starting from scratch. The short term of Saylor’s mayorship and the selection of his replacement create an artificial deadline: Saylor’s ego is so gargantuan that you know he is going to try to do something that only he can claim is important. In the very bottom of her heart, Ruth’s intention as Mayor was to be as fair as she could. Saylor does not have as big a heart as Ruth, and he has a lot higher aspirations for at least State Assembly, so his expectations about building his image in the Sacramento region and his long view may well get in the way of his immediate steps.

How the 2010 city council race played out
Rochelle Swanson
Davis is lucky Rochelle Swanson stepped forward and put in the effort to run for city council. She is the real deal. If you meet with her, she will probably be interested in what you have to say.

When I first spoke with her on the phone, I told her about Jon Walker’s Guide to the Viable System Model, and gave her the URL to find it on the Internet. When I met with her a week later, she had read the material, understood the basics of it, and during our far-ranging discussion about city issues appropriately used the VSM five times.

She inquired with others as she had me. She learned a lot about the city and is learning more all the time. Rochelle’s campaign was about inclusion. They involved as many people as they could.

Rochelle was that unique “person a campaign was looking for” who was prepared and juggled it with the rest of her crazy busy Mom life. In late January, Ruth and Sue had their flare-up, and the next evening Rochelle did such a good job of chairing a meeting of the Blue and White Foundation that it generated a spontaneous campaign. If they would have had another month, they probably could have come in first.

The real secret behind Rochelle’s campaign is its potential.

Sydney Vergis
Sydney Vergis was a candidate who peaked two years ago, on Election Day, June, 2008. Backed by then-victors Don Saylor and Stephen Souza, her credentials as a certified planner claimed “expert.” Her youth was complimented by a sorority girl formal bearing that some people perceived as grace. Especially, in the June 2008 election, Sydney looked good compared to Sue Greenwald, who she almost beat for the third seat, and Cecilia Escamillia-Greenwald, whose vote tally she surpassed.

In 2008, as election day approached, a new campaign emerged, with t-shirts and signs posted downtown: Super-S: vote Saylor, Souza and Sydney, tying Sydney to the front runners. The problem is that Sydney’s support was based on her associations, not her own campaign, and the support that she received in the June 2008 election mostly disappeared as the voters turned in their ballots.

Sydney’s biggest problem as a candidate in 2010 was that she spent the next two years assuming that if her name was on the ballot she would be elected. Don Saylor organized a meeting last August, at which they decided that Ruth would run for a third term and Sydney would be her running mate. It was assumed that Lamar was running for re-election. (Lamar instead chose to get married and delay further elected office.) Unknown to almost everyone, right after the 2008 election Sydney was riding her bike and had a nasty car accident – requiring serious shoulder surgery with a subsequent year of rehabilitation.

Maybe she passed that year recuperating with reading, but it wasn’t expanding what she knew about Davis. She re-applied to UCD King Law School, and this time she was accepted but she didn’t do it. Then she returned to UCD to graduate school, in how to measure carbon footprint. (Hardly preparation for ramping up to challenge an enthusiastic incumbent for the second seat on the city council.)

In September Sydney started rounding up endorsements. When she asked for mine, I said sure, but I had already given it to Joe and I would give it to Ruth as well, and maybe even someone who hadn’t emerged yet.

All Sydney wanted was my name, and she really didn’t care about anything else. She didn’t want to talk about Davis or her campaign. At all. She already knew everything she needed to know, and if she needed to know anything else, then someone in The Establishment (Don Saylor, Ruth, Covell Village, the city firefighter union…) would tell her what to think/say/do.

The most troubling thing about Sydney as a candidate in 2010 is that she still thought that in the Spring of 2010, her memorized answers from 2008 worked. Long after the global economic calamity of 2008, and all the federal and state budget problems, she often would use her lines memorized two years before, all too often opening with: “as I stated two years ago,….”

My advice a year ago with hyperactive Lamar still expected to run, was for Sydney to plan on walking every precinct in the city starting in January. She looked at me like it would never happen.

If Lamar had run, he would have danced precincts, and Joe and Ruth would have spent a lot more money to run more dynamic campaigns just to compete. Sydney would have been watching on the sidelines. She pretty much was anyway.

Without Lamar or Ruth in the race, Sydney made the strategic decision to do only a minimum number of things for her campaign: get endorsements, raise money, design a few special pieces for her bicycle sign campaign, a mailer, a brochure, a lawn sign, an ad for the Enterprise at the end of the campaign. The least she had to do to still get elected.

At her campaign kickoff in January, I still had no intention of running. I chatted with my very first UCD teacher and friend, Brian Horsfield (Ph.D. Ag Engineering UCD 1970) who has recently returned to retire in Davis after many years in the Seattle area working for Weyerhaeuser. He had taken an instant liking to Sydney during her previous campaign, and became her #1 volunteer. Brian asked me what he could do to best help Sydney’s campaign. I told him to schedule walking precincts three days a week with his adorable grandson who is why he moved back to Davis. He loved the idea. Sydney wouldn’t let Brian do it; too much trouble.

Sydney was never really more than a Ruth surrogate. The code for Sydney’s 2008 campaign was that the Enterprise would regularly announce that Jan Bridge was hosting Sunday pancakes with candidate Sydney, and probably at least a thousand Ruth supporters read that message as Ruth’s stamp of approval.

This time, Sydney assumed that having Ruth’s daughter’s name as her treasurer on the return address of the envelope of the fundraising solicitation letter would be enough to raise the $30,000 to finance a hot campaign. But Ruth’s political brand took a big hit with her defense of Covell Village when she ran for re-election after the defeat of Measure X, 40-60. And then Ruth’s brand dropped into the past tense with the total collapse of council decorum on January 26th.

When Rochelle entered the race, Sydney did not change her strategy at all. Fundraising was not successful. People who gave last time, or had given to Ruth in the past, were not as likely to contribute money to Sydney’s campaign. Nobody, starting with Sydney, was particularly interested in pushing Sydney’s campaign, which had just plain run out of juice. Her core group would have these fundraiser events that a few people would come to and they would pretend they were in a campaign. But her issues were to take the life out of the dismal science of economic development. She doesn’t even actually do anything at the city Business and Economic Development Commission, or she could have at least talked about what she had been advocating. Her one and only dedicated volunteer, Brian Horsfield, drove around putting up her signs.

For me, the most disappointing moment in Sydney’s campaign was when the Enterprise was interviewing the five candidates – in what apparently was her only attempt to respond to my advocating the Viable System Model, Sydney sat up in her prim, proper way, and announced that as a licensed professional financial planner, it is the judgment of the literature that re-organizations don’t work.

At least she figured out that I am advocating real time decision taking, which would mean perpetual re-organization.

But Sydney? Even the U.S. Army (remember the Army Air Corps) and the Catholic Church have re-organized. Due to drops in advertising revenue, the Enterprise has had major cutbacks leading to necessary consolidation of responsibilities among the survivors. World class sports editor Chris Saur emerged because he was still standing after one of the many earthquakes, and the boss Editor Debbie Davis would rather have husband Bruce writing enthusiastically about kids and sports, having the time of his life doing what he loves most, and leave Chris stuck with the POWER of writing the headlines, cropping the pictures, editing the captions and squeezing in the stories with the names mostly spelled right.

Shortly before the Enterprise interview with the candidates, the Davis City Manager announced a major reorganization, over half of which was based on attrition and elimination of unfilled positions. Basically, reorganization by default. I have confidence in the city management staff, especially Bill Emlen and Paul Navazio, so I am watching to see what emerges.

Sydney has a reputation for strong analytical skills. I didn’t see it at all. Never once did she deviate from script about policy issues based on new information. Sydney should become an investment banker, have maybe ten clients who appreciate her for who she is and whatever it is that she does.

Daniel Watts
Daniel Watts is mostly interested in self-promotion. He was often mis-informed, especially by his law professors who may have had tongue firmly in cheek, and he blabbed away whatever they had said. Quoting your law professors as the gospel of municipal governance may work in law school but he was a detriment to the city of Davis.

Joe Krovoza
Which brings us to Joe Krovoza, the smiling salesman.

I like Joe’s wife, Janet. We met when she started working in the UCD College of Engineering in 1992. A couple years ago, I asked her about Joe’s running for council. (I do that. I consider it my civic responsibility, my civic duty, to encourage people that make the effort to help the body politic. Reader: I am looking for people to run for city council in 2012, or to help with a campaign and eventually be somebody’s campaign manager, or lawn sign coordinator, or help table at the Farmers Market, or make some phone calls….)

When I went on a Davis Bicycles! organized ride in August, Joe rode with me and talked about his running for city council and I encouraged him. I sent him my template on how to set up a successful campaign in Davis. We met. I talked from the experience of being involved in every single Davis election since 1982. We met several times. Joe took lots of notes. (I met with Sydney, and she was already bored, coasting, and losing momentum.) I talked Joe up, and he met with key elected officials and opinion leaders.

He asked my advice on whether to have his campaign kickoff at Nugget Fields showing his longtime soccer connections, or the Farmers Market, or a bike ride, or the multi-modal train station to emphasize transportation policy options which is his day job at the university. I recommended that he meet at Farmers Market at 10:30, bike caravan to the train station at 11:00, and then give his speech. That image crystallized in his mind, and it turned out as I had suggested. I counted over 100 people attending at the beginning of his talk at the train station.

Then Joe and I met just before Thanksgiving, to evaluate and to plan. Joe told me, “You need to figure out a role for yourself in my campaign.” Joe parceled out different jobs and then he was coordinating. I had been advocating that he pick a campaign manager, but apparently he never did. He kept complete control of his operation. I had advocated that his role as a council member would be to direct staff, and to indirectly influence citizens, so he should practice by involving more people in his campaign organization and create a structure. The other thing I advocated was that he work towards an active precinct operation that comes to fruition in May.

Joe rejected the idea of having a grassroots community network. He was building a great database of names, addresses, phone numbers and email addresses, and that computer list became his goal.

Based on all the work I had done laying the organization for his campaign, I told him I had a role in his campaign, campaign consultant. Joe said No you are not. And he pretty much stopped talking to me about what he was going to do in his campaign (this being the Tuesday before last Thanksgiving), and I was never again involved in any of the decisions (except one special meeting he had on President’s Holiday in late February, where the focus on partnerships emerged as a good campaign theme; again, before I had any thought of running.) At that point, Joe killed whatever relationship we had. He continued to meet with me for three months, always putting me off when I asked strategic questions (as though I was working for another candidate or going to run myself). And he would taunt me to come up with a role in his campaign that he would find acceptable. Well, there was no role that he would find acceptable. When I offered to actually make his campaign something more than he conceived with active precincts, he was so paranoid that he never trusted me again. Joe: the proof of the pudding: never at any time since last August have I, in thought, word or deed, by commission or omission (according to Luther) had a second where I even hinted at opposing your candidacy. [Then.]

Joe stopped talking to me, because he refused to listen to me, because he is paranoid. I recommended that Joe be Mayoral, that he treat each of the other candidates like he could work well with them/us. He couldn’t do it. He strategically attacked Sydney as though it would help him, when she was already gone anyway; he was hostile towards me; and, at the end, his campaign couldn’t understand why Rochelle’s campaign was gaining energy and they deeply resented it, and Joe’s campaign never had any energy except Joe’s personal hyperactivity. Joe personally worked really hard in May, and he had a network of individuals with assignments, but he didn’t have an organization that did much of anything together. Joe’s campaign wasn’t about building community of Davis, it was about building the community of Joe.

The winners of this election were: the citizens of Davis because we elected two strong candidates (Joe & Rochelle), Rochelle, Daniel because he got all his publicity, and me because I explored the Viable System Model as I claimed (contrary to whatever it is that Joe thinks motivated me to run).

The losers were Sydney, and Joe because he ended up making these false claims about getting along, that now makes all his claims sound like hollow hype. The very first time I met with Joe, he spent the final 20 minutes berating me because I wouldn’t unconditionally support whatever Davis Bicycles! might propose when I was already objecting to some of their ideas. Joe has berated me three times, where there was absolutely only one side to the story, his side.

After Joe told me I wasn’t his campaign consultant, I proved to him that I was – I made my services no longer necessary. I spent the hour saying that the kickoff was perfect. The only mistake was that he over-emphasized the need to raise money. Given his socio-economic status, and his family friends, when people hear his campaign, they will whip out their checkbooks and say “Only $100?” Just before I had to leave, I said, “AND, Thursday is Thanksgiving; on Sunday, you need to organize a fundraiser letter mailing party with two dozen people and have computer labels for what turned out to be 7,000 letters, so that people could write a check to his campaign before they started their Christmas shopping”.

Joe had lots and lots of favors to call in from his years of community volunteer work around his two daughters. During the month of December he put together an awesome database of his extended Friends-of-Friends mailing/email/campaign list. I wanted to map his whole list and create a precinct organization; he was content with having a mailing list that he could glean potential contributors and volunteers. That initial effort raised $7,000. It was a preemptive strike that sewed up his coming in first. He coasted from that point on and my ideas were unnecessary to him.

Each time Joe and I crossed paths proved more difficult. He would taunt me about what I could do for his campaign. I begged to let me help with a precinct operation, but that turned out to be something he had no interest in. Finally, in February we fought about it. I wanted an energetic precinct organization to build community with him as the focal point (The Mayor in reality and not just the elected figurehead.) Joe was content that he had already won and he was set in his campaign plan. I wasn’t a part of his plan.

Joe was so self-centered that I kept advising him to be Mayoral, to see all the candidates as allies not adversaries. He never got it. In January, after I recommended to Brian Horsfield that he walk for Sydney, I was explaining what I had recommended to Joe, and Joe was outraged that I had given HIS idea for precinct walking to the other campaign, when I was the only one talking precincts in his campaign, Joe wasn’t supporting what I was recommending, AND, I was telling Joe the story because it was opposition research that his then-principal opponent still was not mounting a serious campaign because Sydney had refused to let Brian walk precincts for her.

Although I don’t know first hand because Joe hasn’t been civil enough to talk with me (talked at, a few times, but not “talked with” after November), but he apparently was shocked when I announced for the city council race. He called but he didn’t say what he was thinking, and when we had lunch the next week for the last time, his definitive statement was that we are opponents and he resented me ever since. He never seemed to understand that he had cut me off three months before, and I had nowhere else to go with my ideas about the Viable System Model. (Forget Sydney – there were a lot less exotic things that she doesn’t comprehend or care about.) My candidacy supposedly confirmed his suspicions that I had intended to run all along, even though I never once cost him a vote by saying ANYTHING about him, except that I was supporting him with my other vote, which I did. Where is the shred of evidence to confirm his paranoia (unjustified fear)? I endorsed Joe in August, and I have kept unfailing support for him ever since. I took my Vote for Joe button off my bike a week after the election.

The city of Davis is best served by the election of Joe and Rochelle, and while I feel that Rochelle is a better politician than Joe, I am hopeful that the city will move in better directions due to their efforts.

I almost never asked for people to vote for me during the campaign. At the end of the forums, when Joe gave a rousing statement of why you should vote for him, I talked about the Viable System Model.

Joe went to law school and he likes to win. He pretty much ran his campaign to win at all cost, contrary to his civility claims after the campaign. Joe attacked Sydney on several occasions, about things she was already too embarrassed about to defend. From December on, he USUALLY misunderstood what I was saying. He often didn’t appear to listen, and got distinctly wrong what I had said. What was I supposed to do? Continue to support him unconditionally, like he is the king? Sit on the sidelines? He doesn’t understand that I appeared to do that for six years when I had Ruth’s ear. I have done everything I could to treat him the positive way he claims he has been treating me. The proof is that I sent him and Rochelle each an email after the election, congratulating them and asking for a chance to meet, but he hasn’t found time in two months to respond to my email. Joe couldn’t represent me any more than Sue who only represents herself. During the first council meeting, when Sue turned to Joe for help in gaining some of the council appointments she felt were important, he only cared about his own appointments and wouldn’t help her at all, probably not the last time Sue will be disappointed in Joe.

The only person I came half way close to as a result of Joe’s campaign was Robert Canning, who was responsible for the precinct version of Joe’s campaign. I happened to see him waiting for the train the morning before the election, and in a not friendly way he asked where Rochelle’s campaign came from, so I explained what I had seen:
- Joe’s campaign was made up of people whose children had grown up with Joe’s, and Joe was re-creating the PTA/AYSO soccer list of the past 20 years, and bringing that to life for one thing: to get Joe elected June 8th.
- Rochelle’s campaign grew out of the frustration of school people who feel the city should be doing more; it started with the Blue & White Foundation, which is the parents of children who hope to be on varsity teams when they are at Davis High, and Support our Schools, which is for parents who care about 7th period and foreign languages, and music and drama, and the kinds of programs that make the Davis community a nurturing environment for many, many children. Joe wanted to communicate with those parents, Rochelle was already communicating with those parents. Those parents are the current soccer moms, Joe’s are the former soccer moms. The reason Rochelle’s campaign caught fire was that her message was on the already necessary get-the-kids-to-school-today network. Joe claimed it, past tense; with Rochelle, it was the real thing, alive today and growing with every Blue & White Foundation Alumni Association Davis HS class reunion.

Don’t let the smile fool you. Joe cares about Joe first, Davis second. I had always advised Joe to peak on Election Day, but that was based on my ideas about a growing, evolving organization that would become the backbone of a citywide network supporting his leadership. I assumed that he would build a community of support. Joe’s campaign did only enough to come in first, but if the election campaign had run even a week longer, Rochelle had momentum, and Joe was chugging along but he had no organizational capacity to kick it up to another level, let along continue to grow after the election. Joe’s campaign list diminishes in quality daily.

Joe sold the city’s voters a product. He is a scam.

Forecast for the long term
This election was historic, like 1972 (growth versus slow growth), 1990-2 (limited growth versus no growth). This is the first time since 1906 when growth is not a force for political change. Covell Village is out there off the horizon, now in the distant future. UCD’s West Village will absorb whatever growth pressure might emerge, but that won’t be for at least 5 years (two more regular council elections).

Sue Greenwald and Lamar Heystak’s elections were the final products of a movement around the word “Progressive” that has lost all meaning, and many of the active people in the established network have retired, moved or passed away. Originally, Progressive implied environmental awareness. Like the Radical Liberal party of some Latin American country, the label came to mean whatever someone wanted to associate with it. Partly they lost their issue: it is the chaos of the global economy that is playing out in the Sacramento regional housing market; realtors are working hard to move existing product; less than ten new houses are expected to be built in Davis this year.

So during the next 5 years, if growth is no longer the dividing line within city politics, where will the dynamic be?

Without population growth, both the city government and the school district face expanding responsibilities and shrinking resources. There is increasing potential that two distinct political populations emerge as the New Davis Politics: families with children in the schools versus seniors. Within the city government, both elder and children services are unique enough that there is lots of potential for expansion or reduction of services. (One third of the city residential population are college students, who are about as relevant to city politics as the over-bred squirrels.)

The main way to see these two emerging competing political institutions (for at least the next five years and then maybe a transition to something else), is: Rochelle’s campaign represents the younger families and Joe’s campaign represents the seniors and retirees.

Joe’s database peaked in December when his computer teams finished going through the PTA rosters of the children of his friends. Most of those children are now in high school or graduated. Most of the voters in those households no longer have primary daily issues with the Davis school district, especially about using scarce school resources.

Rochelle’s list is people who are active in the schools now. Their most pressing concerns have to do with getting their families and kids ready for a successful school year.

Traditionally, the school district is subservient to the city. When former school board trustee Susie Boyd was Mayor, the city imposed restrictive parking around the high school, over the school board’s formal objections. The board pointed out that the city had violated its own policies: it surveyed the neighborhood and the potential beneficiaries had overwhelmingly opposed the policy. The Mayor haughtily concluded the discussion by announcing that the school district has no choice but to live with the city’s actions.

When the city bullied the school district and put a competing funding measure on the school race ballot, both H & I were defeated. With budget challenges looming, it will be interesting to see how the battle lines for resources set up, and how well the school board and the city council are able to collaborate.

Maybe 95% of the school district is inside the city limits. The city, the school district, the county and the university can pool their ideas about their resources and responsibilities. There has to be potential for consolidation, efficiencies, discontinuations, and shared economies of scale. I think the winning candidate called it partnerships.

Candidates to fill Don Saylor’s unfinished term:
Would not be a candidate in 2012: Delaine Easton
Others: Lucas Frehrichs, Dan Wolk
Definitely not a candidate: Susan Lovenburg

Candidates for City Council in 2012
Stephen Souza
Sue Greenwald
Dan Wolk
Lucas Frehrichs
Rochelle’s ami (woman candidate)