The idea was to make Davis sound like such a terrible place to be that people wouldn't want to move here. All that pollen flows freely on the valley winds. Maeda says he even knows of people who have had to sleep with a filtered plastic tent around their bed. The landscape is monotonous. Summers are hot.
Rats are a problem.
The editorial concluded with a comment about Maeda's efforts from Sandy Motley, the mayor of Davis at the time. Some residents could chuckle over the latest jokes over the city's peculiar ways. Others were aghast, complaining that Davis was becoming a national laughing stock. Actually, the real culprit was a unique political style that has evolved over 30 years. Partansky was an unusual political figure, an artist with a utopian view of the world who critics contended was politically naive and eccentric, but she wasn't an aberration.