When Bapu Vaitla (pictured) joined the Davis City Council in 2022, he says today on Davisville, he was interested in pursuing policy solutions that would work for Davis and might be a model for the state or other communities. That approach ran into constraints.
“One of my primary motivations for running for council is I thought that Davis would be an ideal community to try to model some solutions that are more widely applicable, solutions around affordable housing or climate change, perhaps mental health,” he says. An idea that worked well here might inspire the state or other communities to do the same.
“I’ve learned in the intervening time that there are a lot of constraints to that kind of theory of change,” he says, “about local government modeling innovations that then get scaled up.”
On this week's Davisville, Vaitla, who opted not to seek a second term and leaves the council in December, elaborates on the constraints — fiscal and cultural — and other experiences from his 4 years helping to lead Davis.
