By admin 
The first results for Davis’ Measure V showed the proposal trailing by 583 votes, with 53% of voters opposed and 47% in favor, according to the first results released at 8:12 p.m. Tuesday.
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Measure V asked Davis voters to approve Village Farms, an approximately 1,800-unit, 498-acre housing development north of East Covell Boulevard.
About 50 people gathered at the Yes on V campaign office Tuesday night to watch returns, including some of the dozens of UC Davis student interns who supported the measure. Attendees said they were uncertain whether the measure would pass but remained optimistic.
“I’ll be surprised either way,” Sandy Whitcomb of the Village Farms development team said shortly before polls closed.
Online discourse around the measure was often heated, but most of the campaign’s in-person conversations with voters were civil and productive, Whitcomb said. She said the campaign’s efforts over the past three months had helped shift local conversations about housing in a positive direction, regardless of the outcome.
Albert Robles, who was interviewed by The Bee at the campaign’s kickoff event in March, said he believed he had convinced many of his neighbors to support the measure.
“I feel good about it,” Robles said in a phone interview about an hour before polls closed. “I voted for my kids to have a good life near the parents and family.”
Speakers from the development team addressed supporters minutes before polls closed.
“I can’t believe we’re actually here,” Rochelle Swanson of the Village Farms development team told the crowd. “We all couldn’t have done it without you.”
Yolo County ACE, the county’s assessor, clerk-recorder and elections office, will release another batch of results at about 10 p.m.
The county also released early results for the 3rd District Board of Supervisors race, which will decide who will represent portions of Woodland and the Bryte and Broderick community.
Measure V supporters argued that Village Farms is part of the solution to Davis’ housing shortage, budget deficit and school enrollment crisis that would add more than $1 billion to the city’s tax base and 1,100 students to Davis Joint Unified School District campuses.
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“Great schools make a great community,” DJUSD Trustee Joe DiNunzio said. “This project is a huge part of how we renew our emphasis on creating opportunity for our students.”
The committee opposing the measure, No on Measure V, said the Village Farms proposal was rushed onto the ballot and should be significantly revised. They worry the development will be unaffordable to Davis residents, worsen neighborhood traffic and that the site could be plagued by environmental harms like toxic contamination and flooding. No on Measure V has received about $65,500 in donations from more than 75 individual donors.
The team behind the proposal, the North Davis Land Trust, invested more than $760,000 in their committee, Yes on Measure V Davis. The committee’s volunteers knocked on more than 32,000 doors, made more than 50,000 calls and distributed more than 1,200 yard signs, according to Andrew Kim from the Yes on Measure V Davis ground team.
The early returns concerned some supporters gathered at campaign headquarters, though several said they expected Election Day ballots to perform better than the initial vote-by-mail tally.
“Now about the returns, the first ones dropped — we would’ve liked them to be a little better, but we’re only 500 votes behind,” said Alan Pryor of the development team. “That’s nothing.”
Kim said the early deficit was consistent with what campaign organizers expected.
“Good news is, it’s going to be a long night and we have a lot of booze,” Kim said.
Another committee in favor of Measure V was sponsored by the Yolo County Association of Realtors and raised $100,000 from the California Association of Realtors Issues Mobilization PAC.
“We want young families in Davis with children,” said Ara Arbabzadeh, a Yolo County Realtor who supported the Yes on V campaign. “This will mean opportunities for families to move back to Davis.”
Arbabzadeh said most proposals like Measure V fail, but she believed Village Farms’ longstanding ties to the community helped make voters more receptive to the project.
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