Editor's note: The following letter was sent to Davis Mayor Julie Partansky Nov. 1 by Chancellor Larry Vanderhoef to further inform City Council deliberations on the Citizens Vote measure. The measure will appears on the Davis March ballot. Dear Julie: This letter attempts to assess the effect on the University of California, Davis, of the proposed Citizens Vote measure. I will assume, for the sake of this discussion, that UC Davis will grow to 30,000-31,000 students by 2010, and that 30,000-31,000 will be the plateau student population through at least 2025. These two assumptions are based on what appears to be UC Davis' fair share of "Tidal Wave II" (the projected 60,000 additional UC students who are the babies of the Baby Boomers), and the long-held principle of the University of California that none of our campuses should exceed 30-31,000 students. I will also assume that Davis' rental vacancy rate will decline and housing costs will rise if the Citizens Vote measure passes. Eventual scarce housing is an easily predicted result of the Citizens Vote measure, primarily because the intent of the measure is growth control. It is my personal impression that just the threat of the Citizens Vote measure is already resulting in increased housing costs and "spec house" purchases. So what will this mean for UC Davis? What will we gain? What will we lose? We will certainly lose one of our most unique and valuable recruiting tools, namely the charm of one of the last remaining college towns associated with a research university. This city, changed forever by the university in 1905, will simply not be affordable for any of our UC Davis constituencies-students, staff or faculty. Just as Stanford has lost Palo Alto to wealthy, non-university homebuyers, so, too, will Davis be lost to UC Davis as a place for any but a very few of our students, faculty and staff to live. That will be unfortunate on two accounts. First, the livability of a city is not tightly related to size, as many seem to be convinced. There are 100,000-plus cities, like Portland, that are magnificent, and there are cities of 50,000 that are dreary and dull. Davis, held at 50,000 with (eventually) no UC Davis employees, students or alums may, in fact, be a better city than it is today. Or it may not. It will, for sure, be lots different, serving, as it will, as a bedroom community for people who work elsewhere. Second, an inaccessible Davis will force UC Davis to think in terms of alternative scenarios for housing students, faculty and staff. There are exciting aspects to the challenge of creating a new future, for all that we know will be and must be different in the new millennium. I worry, though, that the planning time alone for thoughtfully considering alternatives will not give us the housing we will need in time. I will now return to my earlier point, that city size only loosely correlates with quality of life. The city and the university have worked together unusually well over the years. We worked through a time when the city's population was 16,000 and many said the city's character would be lost at 25,000. We survived a minirebellion when the city's population was 33,000 and the potential for growing to 45,000 was considered certain disaster. In other words, we did not maintain this city's character by tight growth control. Indeed, I have heard it effectively argued that our mistakes, when they've been made, have been mistakes in the nature and character of certain developments, not in development per se. The character of Davis is the result of a sustained commitment to developing and preserving the amenities that make this a good place to work, live, play and go to school, and of creativity and collaboration in continuing to meet the unique needs of a major research university. Fulfilling that commitment and exercising the necessary creativity and collaboration has not always been easy, but to date, people of talent and good will have been willing to dedicate their energy to the preservation of community amenities and values. In summary, it is clearly in the university's best interest to maintain access to the Davis community for our students, faculty and staff. While the Citizens Vote measure does address land use, that is all it addresses. We need a broader discussion about shared campus-community values and ways to preserve and develop the community to reflect those values. For all of us, the question regarding the Citizens Vote measure must be whether it provides a tool for preserving important community characteristics or whether it serves as an impediment to commitment and creativity in determining the future direction of our community. It is my hope that we will, finally, work together to identify new models for capturing campus-related growth, for it is therein, historically and today, that the character and, if you'll allow me a parochial assessment, the charm, of Davis resides. Larry N. Vanderhoef Chancellor