Looks like smooth sailing for new Board's first meeting...

After being circulated by a reader, last Friday's post on the Mayor Pro Tem selection for the next Board got a response from Town Hall.  Actually, it received multiple responses.

Commissioner Graham said there had been no discussion of anyone other than Beth Cashion.

Mayor Woods was "dismayed" and asked if my "goal" was "to foment confusion and distrust".  He then asked that I retract the post and "allow the Town Board to do its work for the citizens of Davidson."

In response to those comments here's the update to Friday's post.

Word has come in from Mayor Woods and Commissioner Graham that they will support Beth Cashion as Mayor Pro Tem.  Very glad to hear that!  They said they had not discussed otherwise and what I printed was incorrect.  In hindsight, I probably should have asked them directly to verify before printing this piece.  My concern was that the town follow tradition, and so I posted what I had heard.  I am glad I was wrong.  I'm more than glad to hear that there won't be a controversy around the subject tomorrow night - a night that should be a celebration for all involved.

That may not sound like the desired retraction they were looking to see, but I am truly very glad that the Board will go forward according to tradition.  As for my goal being to "foment" anything, nothing could be further from the truth.  My goal as always is to pursue open and transparent government wherever possible.

After an election season...

• where the incumbents all ran as a slate, a nontraditional and divisive tactic for Davidson;
• where Mayor Woods endorsed only incumbents, something multiple long-time Davidsonians told me they had not seen by a sitting mayor in previous elections;
• where regarding Commissioner Wessner's defeat Mayor Woods was quoted after the election saying "it's a surprise and frankly it's a disappointment, but we're dealing with it"  - a feeling that means one of the two new Board members caused that disappointment

I don't think it should surprise anyone that people may be thinking more non-traditional actions might be in the offing.  I for one am very glad to hear that apparently is not the case.

This blog reports what I come across in the daily discussions I have with people in town and elsewhere regarding local politics.  I don't "make things up" - an accusation that was directed at me today by one of our electeds.  If people disagree or don't like what they hear, and that includes elected officials, they are more than welcome to submit comments.  I'll print them.

Will transparencey improve in Davidson with new Board members? - UPDATED

We'll see starting tomorrow...

Two seemingly small things are on the agenda for Tuesday's Town of Davidson Board meeting, but of course small things can have big impact.  What makes these interesting is that the first of these occurs with the current/outgoing Board and the second after the new/incoming Board is seated.

An agenda item for new appointments to the Town Advisory Boards has be buried in the "consent agenda".  The consent agenda is where you send things that are unimportant, things that don't warrant any public discussion, things that the Board "just needs to get through" so to speak.  That hardly seems the place for important town appointments including replacement for new Commissioner Beth Cashion who serves on the Planning.  There are also several spots open on the Livability Board and the Design Review Board.  These are the three most important advisory groups for the Town, and yet, the names of the nominees are not even posted in the agenda a day before the meeting where they will be appointed. (These were added the agenda sometime Monday after this post.  See here for the list.)

Commissioners Jim Fuller and Rodney Graham serve as the Board members on the current nominating committee made up of Mayor Woods, senior Town staff, and chairs of the current committees.  It would serve the public interest and the ideal of government transparency if they did the right thing and asked to have this pulled from the consent agenda and voted on separately at tomorrow's meeting.

I'm sure the folks nominated are qualified.  I'm sure they will do a good job and know the town well.  Most will likely have completed the Town's Civics 101 class where they will have been indoctrinated in the "Davidson Way".  The only question is will they have been selected to truly represent a cross section of town residents.  Having their nominations buried in the consent agenda does not let the public know that.

The second and not-so-small small item to be voted on comes after the new Board is seated tomorrow night.  That's the new Board meeting schedule.  As discussed in the previous post, the new Board will vote on the Mayor Pro Tem.  However, after that they will vote on their meeting schedule.  One item that will improve town transparency actually appears to not be on this proposed meeting schedule.  That's the in-home meetings Commissioners have been having on the 3rd Tuesday to ostensibly discuss "team building".

However, the "special meeting" in March of last year seemed to be discussing actual Town business.  It was no longer just a wine and cheese fest but an actual meeting that really should be held in Town Hall.  While these in-home meetings do follow the letter of the open meetings law and citizens are invited.  They do not seem to fit into the spirit of being "open".  How many people are going to actually feel at ease going into someone's house?  Not too many, would appear to be the answer from reviewing the meeting minutes.

Let's hope removing this meeting is a sign of good things on the horizon from the new Board when it comes to being open and transparent.

UPDATE: The Advisory Board appointments were added to the agenda Monday after this post.  See here for the list.

UPDATE #2: At Tuesday's Board meeting in an updated agenda, these were pulled from the consent agenda prior to the meeting and voted on separately.  They passed unanimously.

Will Davidson's Town Board Respect Tradition with Mayor Pro Tempore Selection? - UPDATED

A rumor is swirling that an effort may be afoot to prevent Commissioner-elect Beth Cashion from claiming the Mayor Pro Tempore spot when the new Town Board is seated next week.  Tradition has it that the highest vote getter from the Board is selected for this position.  If such a move is made it will be a sign of discord to come and a lack of acceptance on the part of the remaining incumbent Board members and Mayor Woods regarding what actually happened this past election cycle.

Let's all hope for the sake of our community that it does not come to that.  I certainly hope that they would not put us on the same discordant path that Huntersville took this week with its new Board - starting off on the wrong foot and diminishing the role of certain commissioners.

So, you may be asking what is the Mayor Pro Tem and why does it matter?

Well, in the words of Commissioner Brian Jenest, the current holder of the position, Mayor Pro Tem is just a "fancy name for the guy who got the most votes in the last election."  Those were his actual comments at the Summers Walk forum during the campaign.  (See the 13:45 mark of the DavidsonNews.net recording at the link.)

As you can probably imagine, there is a little more to it than that.

The Mayor Pro Tem serves as the "backup" when the Mayor is not available.  Ostensibly, the Pro Tem's main responsibility is to run the Board meetings if the Mayor is unavailable.  However, this person would also go to events and meet with people as the Town representative if the Mayor could not - making the Pro Tem position a little more important than just a seat filler.  The Pro Tem at times can become the "face" of the Town.

For a Town leadership that absolutely craves solidarity and abhors any type of disagreement, having the number two spot filled with a newcomer to the Board, someone who will have ideas independent from the Mayor's, is not desirable.

During the recent campaign, candidate Beth Cashion repeatedly faced a question designed to embarrass her.  Every forum except for Summers Walk asked whether candidates used Mi-Connection.  This question even came up at the last minute to be included in the DavidsonNews.net candidate profiles.  The question implied that not subscribing to the town-owned cable company somehow should disqualify someone from public office.  The question implied that if a new candidate was not a subscriber they somehow did not support the town.

Beth Cashion was the only candidate who had to answer that question with a "no".  She answered it well.  She answered it repeatedly. And apparently, the voters appreciated it - giving her by far the most votes on election day.  My guess is voters cared more about electing someone who won't get us into obviously bad decisions like Mi-Connection rather than if that person spends their household money to bail out the politicians who do.

Beth Cashion absolutely deserves the Mayor Pro Tempore spot, and her fellow Board members should unanimously elect her to that position on Tuesday.

UPDATE 12/9/2013:  Word has come in from Mayor Woods and Commissioner Graham that they will support Beth Cashion as Mayor Pro Tem.  Very glad to hear that!  They said they had not discussed otherwise and what I printed was incorrect.  In hindsight, I probably should have asked them directly to verify before printing this piece.  My concern was that the town follow tradition, and so I posted what I had heard.  I am glad I was wrong.  I'm more than glad to hear that there won't be a controversy around the subject tomorrow night - a night that should be a celebration for all involved.

Revenge or "healing" for Huntersville

Monday night looked like it might be "revenge"...

After a tough campaign for Mayor, one that became personal and fairly nasty at times particularly around the widening of I77 with HOT Lanes, Mayor Jill Swain was quoted in the Lake Norman Citizen as saying "my next step is to start working to help Huntersville heal from all the negativity generated in this campaign."

Things started off well for the newly minted Huntersville Board on Monday night with the unanimous selection of Commissioner Melinda Bales to serve as Mayor Pro Tem.  Bales received by far the most votes in the election for the Huntersville Board being the only candidate to break 3000 ballots.  As tradition has it she became the Mayor Pro Tem serving as Mayor Swain's "backup" even though there are other commissioners with longer tenures on the Board.

Things quickly turned south after that.

The second vote for the new Board ended in a tie when Mayor Swain put forth a recommended set of committee appointments that clearly stacked the deck with commissioners from "Team Swain" (Ron Julian, Sarah McAulay, and Jeff Neely) receiving 7 assignments including all of the most important and influential posts.  "The Others" on the Board (Melinda Bales, Danny Phillps, and Rob Kidwell) received a combined total of 3 spots.

When it came time to vote on the assignments "Team Swain" and "The Others" split 3-3 with Mayor Swain casting the tiebreaker in favor of her picks.  See below for the details.

Here are a couple of the low-lights of this set of assignments around the major transportation issues affecting our region.

Mayor Pro Tem Bales gets the LNTC post while Sarah McAulay gets sent back to the CRTPO (formerly MUMPO) post.  While the LNTC sounds important, the real transportation decisions for our region are made at the CRTPO.  Instead of sending the highest vote getter for Huntersville to CRTPO, Mayor Swain chose to send the person who tried to shut down debate at that group on the all important widening of I-77.  See this video where Chairwoman McAulay prevents members of the public from speaking at the public hearing on widening I-77.

Commissioners Phillips and Kidwell get the Arts and Sciences Council and the Huntersville Historical Society posts respectively.  They received endorsements from the WidenI77.org and Commissioner Kidwell specifically thanks that group on his Facebook page for their support and tells the Lake Norman Citizen regarding I77 "I think it clearly was the issue of the toll lanes," he said. "I believe that was the major factor in me getting elected to the board and I hope this is something we can talk about as a board and get settled." 

Sending "The Others" to these committee assignments while giving the plum assignments to "Team Swain"  seems like a strange way to start the healing process.  But then again, maybe it all makes sense in @SwainsWorld

Davidson Sees More Spending in Recent Election

This is the last in the series on Davidson's recent election season, and it's time to take a quick look at how money was raised and spent.

It's safe to say that this election was probably the last where most candidates go into it intending to spend little or no money.  That is certainly a change for Davidson, but it's not necessarily a bad thing.  It will mean that candidates need to spend more time on campaign finance reports in the future.  But that will also mean that more transparency will be required in how money is raised and spent.

In the past, Davidson candidates almost always signed what's called a Certification of Threshold form at the Board of Elections stating that their campaigns would stay below the legal limit of $1000 eliminating the need for detailed campaign finance reporting.  It was a very convenient way to file since small town elections really don't absolutely require large sums of money.  This cycle started out much that same way.  With only Stacey Anderson and Beth Cashion starting their campaigns intending to spend more than $1000, all of the other candidates, myself included, intended to spend less than the threshold.  By the end of the campaign however, all but Commissioner Jenest appear to have raised and/or spent more than the threshold.  This is based on reporting done by DavidsonNews.net as well as a review of the campaign finance reports on hand to date at the Mecklenburg Board of Elections. 

Here are some interesting highlights:

• Candidates used consultants (possibly a first for a Davidson election) - Challengers Stacey Anderson and Beth Cashion used local consultants to support campaign marketing.  Commissioners Jim Fuller and Connie Wessner used an Asheville based company to support mass mailings. 
• DavidsonNews.net received campaign dollars from every candidate in the form of purchased web ads.  The incumbents all purchased individual adds as well as what can best be described as a "team" add featuring all of them.  Mayor Woods also purchased adds endorsing the incumbents.  (An add on DNN runs about $300/month depending on the size of the banner.)
• The least effective spending?  Commissioner Fuller also purchased a $100 add in the Davidsonian published by Davidson College.  Based on a quick review of the voters from the College zip code 28035 (yes, there is a College zip code!) only 6 college students voted this election.

So the obvious question is why did so many candidates, particularly the incumbents, go into the election intending to spend little to no money, but end up spending more than anticipated?

I can only speak for myself with any certainty, but the logical reason is that it was a closer race than the incumbents expected.  For example the mass mailings done by Commissioners Fuller and Wessner put each of them well over the threshold.  If they intended on doing that from the beginning, they would never have signed the form committing to stay below the spending limit.  For myself, what put me over the threshold was the unexpected receipt of in kind contributions in the form of ads on my behalf when I received the Police Benevolent Association endorsement.   I was also fortunate to receive more donations from supporters than I originally planned.  (Obviously, an unexpected and very nice surprise.)

Some will say that all this is a bad thing - seeing money coming into our local elections as just another sign of a bygone era.  However, in a counter-intuitive way, it may mean more candidates feel able to enter the contests for our elections.  Here's why.

While most candidates did in fact self-fund their campaigns, I proved that a candidate who could not fully self-fund a campaign could still be competitive even as money became a tangible part of the election process.  Yes, I had to raise some money.  However, Davidson is a generous town, and I was overjoyed to be able to raise enough for what I needed.  Could I have raised and spent more?  Would it have made a difference?  "Yes", and "probably" are the best answers to those questions.  Honestly, I think that I ran out of time before I ran out of money, but that's the thing about elections - you always have too little of both.

More Donations and Volunteers for the Davidson Community Garden

Good things keep happening for the Davidson Community Garden.

 

This past week Seasons at the Lake held it's grand opening at its new store just around the corner from the garden.  As part of the festivities the store offered to donate 20% of proceeds from all ornament sales during the event to the DCG effort.  As a sign that the garden has truly become a recognizable and integral part of the Village area, this donation truly came out of the blue.  When asked how it was decided to make this gift, owner Gary Skaggs simply said that he sees the garden every day when driving by and had noticed the regular groups of volunteers on Saturdays.  He thought this donation would be a nice way to contribute.

 

For the record...IT IS!!!

 

...and the volunteers kept coming this weekend. 

 

While the regular volunteer meetings officially ended November 16th, it was great to see a large group of Davidson College students out this past Saturday helping get the garden in shape for winter.  Members of the Alpha Phi Alpha service fraternity and several other students showed up to help get garden beds mulched and turned. 

 

Come springtime, these efforts will have the beds ready to produce again!!!

"And the survey says?" - Polling the Davidson Electorate

Public polling of our local municipal elections is a rarity.  Polling costs money and takes time - both things that are in short supply when it comes to town elections that see relatively little money raised by candidates and the core campaign period spans only about 30 days.

But what if someone was willing to take the time and do it for free?  What if the person coordinating the polling effort actually had a national reputation in the field of analyzing elections data?  What if the survey could be done with a level of scientific accuracy comparable to the national surveys we all see and hear about in the daily news?

Would it be worth it then?  Yes, absolutely!

In Davidson this election cycle, just such a survey occurred in the run up to the election.  Conducted by Assistant Professor Josh Putnam's Public Opinion class at  Davidson College, a survey was completed in the week before election day.  If you follow politics, you may have heard of Professor Putnam, he writes the Frontloading HQ blog and made a bit of a name for himself during the 2012 election cycle - being one of only 3 nationally known "pundits" to nail the Electoral College results in the election for President of the United States.

Scaling back a bit from the national stage, he and his public policy class conducted a survey during the last week of October hand delivering surveys to randomly selected registered voters, picking them back up, and then tallying the results.  Can you say labor intensive!?!?

The survey covered not only the election, but also some of the policy questions facing the town.  It was remarkably balanced in how close it came to the actual demographics of Davidson - something harder to do with a small population where small numbers can make big percentage differences.  The margin of error was +/- 6.3%.  That's a little outside the bounds of what larger surveys tend to achieve, but still close enough to allow for valuable information to be collected.  It was conducted as a survey of registered voters, not 'likely' voters.

Here are some bits gleaned from the results:

•  Everyone says they will vote, but most still do not. - 75% of survey respondents said they planned to vote.  That meshes with everything I heard while going door-to-door where just about everyone said they would vote.  Davidson's actual voter turnout? Less than 25%.
• People still don't like the idea of HOT Lanes on I77. - After a full year of selling the plan to expand I-77 with tolls by installing new HOT lanes, supporters failed to move the dial in their favor at all.  56% of survey respondents said they did not approve of the plan.  Survey results from the National Citizen Survey published in March of 2012 had the number opposed at 53%.  All of Davidson's incumbents supported HOT lanes.  All of the challengers opposed them to varying degrees.
• Mayor Woods's level of support lower than his vote totals would imply. - 56% of voters approve of the way John Woods handles his job as Mayor.  While he received 95% of votes cast this election, nearly 25% voters left this race blank or wrote in another candidate on their ballot.  These poll numbers imply that a fare number of people voted for John Woods simply because he was the only name on the ballot.  Interestingly, his "approval" number in this poll comes in much closer his voter percentage in the 2011 election when he did have a challenger.  In that election he received 59.67% of the overall vote while actually losing Precinct 127.
• The race was tight all the way to the end. - Conducted in the last week before the election, four of the candidates ultimately in the top 5 on election day were also in the top five of this poll.  Beth Cashion had the same large lead she enjoyed on election day.  However, at polling time 42% still selected "not sure" - meaning a very large percentage of people made their decisions in the last days before the election.  The below chart shows the difference in percentage of total "votes" received in the poll vs. those on election day.  As you can see a larger chunk of the undecided voters swung toward two of the challengers, Stacey Anderson and myself.  This is a common occurrence in elections where undecided voters choose at the end and go with new faces.  This swing is what pushed Stacey Anderson ahead of Connie Wessner and into the fifth and final spot.

• Endorsements mattered. - As mentioned in the previous post, several endorsements impacted this election.  That post also mentioned the River Run "endorsement" of neighborhood candidates as the "most important".  Here's why. That endorsement came out on November 1st - after the polling data for this survey was collected.  River Run has over 750 households.  It is not hard to see that this would have some positive impact for the candidates mentioned in that endorsement - Stacey Anderson and Vince Winegardner.  With Ms Anderson having lower name recognition than Mr Winegardner (he is a former River Run POA president), she had more potential upside benefit of the endorsement email on undecided voters. Ultimately, Stacey Anderson edged out incumbent Connie Wessner by only 59 votes.  That's a margin that certainly could have come from this single endorsement in such a large neighborhood.  Causing the first incumbent to lose re-election since 1997 certainly warrants making this endorsement the "most important".  (Incidentally, I also attribute my positive swing in the final numbers to endorsements.   The last major effort of my campaign was to ensure as many people as possible knew of the endorsements I received with one final distribution of campaign literature that focused on these in large part.)

 As you can see, surveys - even in small elections - can be both informative and useful when analyzing how our elections occur and what impacts them.  They provide a window into what the public is thinking, how they receive and digest information, and what tactics work when candidates are trying to communicate.  As these results show, when done right they can also be accurate gauges of what the ultimate outcome will be.

My hope is that this type of survey continues to be done for our elections.  It would also be great if our town embraced using these tools when making large decisions - something I spoke about frequently as part of my own campaign.  Not everything can or should go to a voter referendum, but getting real and meaningful citizen input before making big decisions that impact our quality of life should be a desired goal for all of our elected officials.

To see the detailed data from this survey, click here.